Dead on arrival- Pus under the scope.

Mar 13, 2016 • 10:26 PM UTC

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Saad Bhamla

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We’ve all encountered pus on our bodies at one point on another. It usually occurs at a site of inflammation. It’s a whitish-yellow, viscous liquid.
So what’s inside the pus liquid?
Let’s find out.
Here’s a slide with a sample of pus.

Here’s a first look under the scope.

All those tiny cells are dead white blood cells (leukocytes). The irony is not lost on me, that in my previous post I was hunting for white blood cells , and here i have thousands of them – dead!
I also hoped to see some bacteria but couldn’t find any. I did find clusters of dead skin cells (i think?). However, no nucleus was observable in the cells – so it could just be an artifact.

I will hunt more carefully around and see if I can find any bacteria in this liquid. It smelled quite bad, so i am certain they are there – but again hidden from plain sight and need to be revealed.
In any case, the pus liquid made some nice patterns as it dried and here are a few. Even a seemingly disgusting and yucky liquid seems cannot help itself but obey the capillary forces..