232 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



pearance above ground of the clavate stroma of Cordyceps, emerging from a 

 caterpillar or other buried insect, was but a further development of the insect 

 comparable to the metamorphosis of a pupa to a moth or butterfly. As early as 

 the time of Persoon (1801) and Fries (1821-1832) the clavate stromata were 

 recognized as fungi growing from within the dead insects. Mycotic growths 

 in the air passages of birds were reported between 1815 and 1830. In 1837 

 Remak (according to Sartory, 1920) reported that in the diseases of man known 

 as thrush and favus the whitish growth was a mass of fungus threads, an obser- 

 vation confirmed two years later by Schoenlein and in 1841 by Gruby (Sartory, 

 1920). A number of other investigators reported similar discoveries in man and 

 other animals in the next few years. In 1853 appeared the first collective work 

 on these fungi, by Robin. Virchow (1856) described several cases of fungus- 

 infection in the lungs of people and introduced the word mycosis for such infec- 

 tions. From 1860 onward many different mycoses were reported, but mainly 

 this was done by i)hysicians who had little mycological training. It was mainly 

 among the French investigators in the next thirty to forty years that the great- 

 est progress was made in medical mycology. 



R. Sabouraud (1894a, 1894b, 1910) made intensive mycological as well as 

 clinical studies of the diseases caused by fungi attacking the hairs in man and 

 other animals — the so-called tineas, ringworms, favus, and so on. E. Bodin 

 (1901), Fernand Gueguen (1909), A Sartory (1920-1923), and Vuillemin 

 (1931) wrote books bringing up to date the accumulated information on these 

 diseases. In Germany, "Wilhelm Zopf (1890) devoted a considerable portion 

 of his textbook on fungi to these parasites of man and other animals. In the 

 United States, Dr. Carroll W. Dodge (1935) published a very extensive and 

 detailed work on the subject, probably the most complete up to the date of its 

 publication. Still more recent and clinically more modern is a book by Conant 

 et al. (1945). It must be recognized that, except in the last two publications, 

 the mycological nomenclature used is mainly that employed by medical writers, 

 not actually in full accordance with the international rules of botanical nomen- 

 clature. Vuillemin admits this in his discussion of the fungi attacking hairs, 

 the "Trichophytes." In recent years the American students of medical my- 

 cology have attempted to grow these fungi on standard culture media under, 

 as far as possible, the same conditions of temperature, light, oxygen supply, 

 etc., as are generally used foi? the culture of plant saprophytes. Thus it has 

 become possible to determine the relationships of a number of these fungi, 

 which, when grown on the special media and at 37° C, produced growths that 

 did not at all reveal their kinship. 



It is not only in France and the United States that the study of medical 

 mycology has been progressing. Very much has been accomplished in South 

 America, Italy, Germany, Japan, and in other countries. 



The Taxonomy of Fungi 



While all the above-mentioned life-history and anatomical studies, as well as 

 the special studies in medical mycology, were being carried on taxonomy of fungi 

 was not neglected. The earlier European botanical writers included the larger 

 nonmicroscopic fungi in their herbals, but with little idea of their real nature. 



