132 Early Work in North America 



Martin to change from his plan to become a doctor of medicine 

 and be a teacher and investigator. While a Yale medical student, 

 he had taught physiological chemistry at Sheffield Scientific School, 

 and after the year of study in physiology at Johns Hopkins he had 

 purposed to complete his medical education at the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. 



Theobald Smith and Erwin Smith became acquainted, and may 

 have discussed the availability of advanced instruction in biology 

 along the eastern seaboard. In 1883 Sedgwick had been appointed 

 Assistant Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, and the course he planned for pre-medical and other 

 students included chemistry, physics, general biology, comparative 

 anatomy, histology, and physiology."" In 1884 Dr. Joseph Leidy, 

 the last of the great naturalists to cover the "whole field of 

 nature" in studies ranging from the Protozoa and Infusoria up to 

 man,"^ had been appointed director of the Biological Department 

 of the University of Pennsylvania."" At Harvard University, since 

 the middle of the century, the instruction of such men as Jeffries 

 Wyman in anatomy and physiology, Louis and Alexander Agassiz 

 in zoology and paleontology, and Asa Gray,"^ Goodale, and Far- 

 low in botany had been sustaining qualities of leadership. In 

 American science, the centuries-old supremacy of geology, chem- 

 istry, and other branches of the physical sciences was yielding with 

 every year to important gains being made by the biological 

 sciences. Theobald Smith's graduate study at Cornell had centered 

 largely around the increasingly important subject of histological 

 technique. In fact, his appointment to a position in Washington 

 had been to some extent due to his knowledge of physiology as 

 well as pathology. When Dr. Daniel E. Salmon, chief of the 

 Bureau of Animal Industry, had consulted Dr. Simon Henry Gage, 

 associate professor of physiology at Cornell, to recommend some- 

 one to help him in the laboratory to solve problems of some 

 seriously widespread diseases among domestic animals, Gage 

 recommended Theobald Smith. He, twenty-five years of age and 



"" Idem, 29. 



^'^ Henry Fairfield Osborn, Impressions of great naturalists. 155, N. Y. and Lon- 

 don, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928. 



^^^ Joseph Leidy, A History of the First Half-Century of the National Academy 

 of Sciences, 159, Washington, 1913. 



^'^ Jeffries Wyman, Leading Amer. Men of Sci., op. cit., 178 (by B. G. Wilder). 



