186 Investigations in Plant Pathology 



tomatic anthrax. Two years later he and Alexandre Yersin estab- 

 lished the existence of a filterable toxine in diphtheria and 

 furnished the basis for Em:l von Behring's antitoxin, demonstrated 

 in 1891-4 and reported to the Budapest Congress. Following 

 Schiitz's discovery in 1887 of a coccus believed the cause of con- 

 tagious pleuropneumonia in horses, Roux and Nocard isolated in 

 1898 a very minute coccus-like organism from contagious pleuro- 

 pneumonia of cattle. In 1898 Shiga found the first known strain 

 of the dysentery bacillus, and Theobald Smith comparativelv 

 studied bovine and human types of tubercle bacilli. How one 

 find in p.ithology led to another always interested Erwin Smith. 

 " Following Koch's work," he observed, 



tuberculosis was discovered in birds and in various quadrupeds, and follow- 

 ing Laveran's work malarial parasites were found in the blood of quad- 

 rupeds, birds, and reptiles. Coccidial diseases also were discovered in 

 man and in various animals. In 1890 Koch discovered tuberculin by 

 means of which early diagnoses of tuberculosis can be made [although] 

 the great hope of a cure from its use, which filled the public mind for a 

 time, was doomed to bitter disappointment. In 1890 te'anus antitoxin 

 was developed by Bchring and Kitasato. In 1891 Councilman and Lefleur, 

 at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, following earlier studies of Losch in 

 Russia (1875) and Kartulis in Egypt (1885), showed clearly that one form 

 of dysentery is due to an amoeba. In 1893 the plague appeared in Hong 

 Kong and in 1894 Kitasato and Yersin, independently, announced the 

 discovery of the plague bacillus. In 1892 Theobald Smith discovered 

 serum anaphylaxis and in 1894 the protozoan cause of infectious enterohe- 

 patitis in turkeys and the following year published a full account of it. . . . 

 In 1895 V. A. Moore differentiated infectious leukaemia of fowls from 

 chicken cholera. During this decade Pfeiffer (1892) isolated and de- 

 scribed the influenza bacillus. In this decade (1896) it was discovered 

 that immunity against typhoid fever could be induced by the inoculation 

 of sterilized cultures (Pfeiffer and Kolle).-° 



Great names in plant pathology were still few. Great names in 

 plant bacteriology were even fewer. Secretary Rusk regarded the 

 work of the Section of Vegetable Pathology as " very important." 

 The fact that no successful treatment for the blight of the LeConte 

 pear, studied in southern Georgia by Waite during 1889, had been 

 found did not discourage him any more than that the cause of 

 peach yellows was not yet known. Peach yellows and the California 

 vine disease were believed caused by bacteria. The best knowledge 



''" Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 25, 26, 30, 31. 



