Recognition of Plant Bacthrioi.ogy in Europh 369 



Relation to PLint Diseases. Amon^ the organisms studied were 

 Bacillus dclpbini^"' Ixnterium amiropogoui EPS or stripe disease 

 of broi)m corn and sorglium (190-1-1922)," Bacterium mori 

 (Boycr and Lambert emend, EPS) or mulberry blight (1905- 

 1921),-'* Bacterium lachrymans Smith and Bryan or angular leaf 

 spot of cucumber (1906-1915),'" and Bacterium syringae (Van 

 Hall) EPS or lilac blight (1906-1907)/'" In 1903 Otto Appcl in 

 Germany described a destructive bacterial potato rot due to 

 Bacillus phytophthorus. Smith regarded this "' masterly paper " 

 as letting" a flood of light into an obscure situation," ''^ and soon 

 Appei's and trvvo or- three similar organisms were found in the 

 United States by Smith and others. To study this disease, black- 

 leg of potato, and its distinction from Bacillus solanacearum. 

 Smith in 1906 would make his first journey to Europe. 



In 1902, before the fifty-first meeting of the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, B. T. Galloway, vice- 

 president and chairman of Section G for 1901, commented in an 

 address, "Applied Botany, Retrospective and Prospective," °^ 

 " Probably in no other field of botanical science has the applied 

 work been of more value to mankind than in bacteriology, surgery, 

 and sanitation. . . . Bacteriology, in its relation to surgery and 

 sanitation, has passed out of the field of applied botany, but 

 problems will still arise. . . ." 



Galloway spoke truthfully, and perhaps more wisely than he 

 knew. October 10, 1901, Dr. Harvey Russell Gaylord of the 

 Cancer Laboratory of the New York State Department of Health 

 had addressed a letter of uncommon interest to Smith. It read: 



Prof[essor] Welch of Johns Hopkins suggested that you might be able 

 to assist mc in a matter relating to the research which we are carrying on in 

 Buffalo on carcinoma. You may possibly have seen an article by v. Leydcn 

 in the Zeitschrijt fiir klin\^ischer'\ Aledizin, vol. 43, page 5, in which he 

 describes having found organisms in the peritoneal fluid of a case of carci- 

 noma, the description of which is very much like our own experiments. He 



"•Bacterial leaf spot diseases, Science n. s. 19(480): 416-418, March 11, 1904. 

 "■^ Synopsis of researches, op. cit., 33. 

 " Ibid., 30. 

 =» Ibid., 33. 

 ""Ibid., 34-35. 



"^ Introduction to bacterial diseases of plants, op. cit., 264 ff . ; Fifty years of 

 pathology, op. cit., 29. 



"- Proc. Am. As/n for Adv. of Sci., 463-480, at pp. 469-470, June-July 1902. 



