40 Background of Work and Study in Public Health 



the practical value of disinfectants, and in these used putrefactive 

 bacteria to determine germicidal activity. His experiments were 

 continued, under the auspices of the American Public Health 

 Association, at the army medical laboratories in Washington and 

 still later at the laboratory of pathology at Johns Hopkins 

 Hospital. 



He was also a skillful photomicrographer. In 1881 he exhibited 

 to the American medical profession one of the first photographs 

 of the tubercle bacillus, cause of tuberculosis. By 1886 he pos- 

 sessed a photomicrograph of the causal bacillus of typhoid fever. 

 In 1884 he made available in America a photomicrograph of 

 Alphonse Laveran's plasmodium, believed to be a parasitic proto- 

 zoan of the red blood corpuscles and the cause of malaria fever."* 



Erwin Smith, while reading about the bacteria and public 

 hygiene, became acquainted with the work of Dr. Sternberg. 

 Entries in his "Index Rerum" as of 1882-1883 show a definite 

 interest in the etiology of yellow fever -^ and considerable knowl- 

 edge, as of 1881, concerning the proof of a " schizomycete " or 

 "bacillus" of malaria. In 1880 Laveran, a French army surgeon 

 stationed in Algiers, had found in the blood cells of patients 

 suffering from malaria certain pigmented bodies, and reported his 

 discovery to the Academy of Sciences in Paris. '"^ American medical 

 scientists, however, had not fully begun their studies of elements 

 in the blood of malaria patients; and a belief in bacilli, as possible 

 causes of both yellow fever and malaria, was fairly prevalent. 



Young Smith's interest in the "Bacillus malariae" seems to 

 indicate more an experimental research scientist in-the-making 

 than a medical doctor. He appears to have read of bacteria at 

 this time equally as much as a student of plants as a student of 

 diseases afflicting mankind. The " bacillus malariae " was referred 

 to as a "plant," but, what is more important, was his interest in 

 the environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, oxygen re- 

 quirements, etc.) necessary to the organism's " development and 



=** Idem. 



"-'Smith's entries cited; Monsieur Victor Babes's paper, descriptions, and figures 

 in Comptes Rendus, 97: 682-685, Sept. 17, 1883; and Dr. Joseph Jones's report 

 (New Orleans) to the Board of Health, reprinted in the London Practitioner, 

 July and Aug., 1882. 



^"See, Dr. Harvey Gushing, The life of Sir William Osier 1: 270 and n. 1, 

 Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1925. 



