A platinum loop is moistened and dipped in a fine powder of the substance in question and borax.

Dr. Coffee put down his platinum loop and shook hands with a gangling, white-haired, pick-faced man in a seersucker suit.

The original spiral loop was similar to the platinum loop used in bacteriology - Takátsy improved it by forming multiple windings in the loop, somewhat like the filament of an incandescent light bulb.

He discovered that if a platinum loop was used to collect cells from a woman's cervix, and the cells were then dried on a slide and stained, it could be determined if cancer cells were present.

It includes illustrations, urological tools such as catheters, cytoscopes (includes Nitze cystoscopes made in 1890 with platinum loops for illumination and rotating cystoscopes), operating resectoscopes, laparoscopes, lithotriptors, and resectoscopes; some of this urologic equipment was sterilized using formaldehyde or cyanide.

So the discharge itself is wiped away, and a small platinum loop or a cotton-wool-tipped orange stick is gently inserted into the urethral meatus, and samples from the urethra are plated out on the relevant culture media while others are smeared onto a microscope slide for staining and examination.