HEALTH AND DISEASE 353 



one, and that very often genius and insanity are not so far apart, they would 

 not sacrifice one single genius for relief from the burden of tens of thou- 

 sands of mentally diseased pei"sons. 



The natural history of the mind is as yet only imperfectly known. The 

 study of the mental diseases has been left far behind in the onward march 

 of science, and today Mever says, "We are very much in the beginning 

 with the outstanding problems still to be solved in this field." And in such 

 a complicated world Adolf Meyer believed with Voltaire, "It is part of 

 a man to have preferences but no exclusions," especially when this mortal 

 is exploring in the devil's own domain. 



>>><<<■ 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PLANT DISEASE 

 IN AGRICULTURE * 



K. STARR CHESTER 



Waist deep in a sea of ripening wheat stand two men, and they mark a 

 turning point in American Agriculture. The man in overalls dejectedly 

 pulls a few stalks from the soil. The stems are cracked and dried, stained 

 with red and black streaks. He breaks off a head of grain and rubs it be- 

 tween his palms, and as he blows the chaff gently away there remain in his 

 palm a few pitifully shrivelled kernels. Many of the stalks have broken 

 over and fallen beneath the reach of binder or combine. The field that just 

 a few days ago gave promise of forty bushels to the acre, today will hardly 

 yield the expense of harvesting. Perhaps it would be better to cut it for hay, 

 or plow it under to give way to a summer crop of fodder. 



This is the grim side of black stem rust, the scourge of wheat farmers in 

 every land. The scene, which took place in 1935 or '37 or '39, is a classic 

 scene, which had its prototypes four thousand years ago in the grain fields 

 of the ancient Hebrews. 



What will this mean to the man in overalls? Perhaps another postpone- 

 ment of the children's chance for education; perhaps failure to meet the 

 payments on the nearly paid-up farm; perhaps this year will mark the be- 

 ginning of the long, sad back-trek from combine to binder, from tractor 

 to mules, from a square mile of rich, flat bottom land to a quarter section 

 of eroded hillside, — on from wheat which takes machinery, to cotton or 

 corn, which you can raise if you have a mule and a family, on to working 

 for the insurance company or the W.P.A. 



That's the dark side. But what about the other man beside the man in 

 overalls? He is the county agricultural agent. He's saying something to 

 this effect: "You don't need to put up with this loss another year. The men 



* Reprinted from The Nature and Prevention of Flant Diseases by K. Starr Chester, 

 by permission of The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia. Copyright 1942. 



