330 Recognition in America 



existence of enzymes in the tissues and fluids of the higher plants and 

 animals must be taken with much allowance when chloroform, thymol, and 

 similar antiseptics have been depended upon to keep the solutions free 

 from bacteria. This has been the case very frequently, and in several places 

 in Greene's interesting book on Fermentations, published in 1899, it is 

 said or inferred that the addition of chloroform will prevent the growth 

 of bacteria. This might or might not be true ; much would depend on the 

 kind of organisms present. The medium to which chloroform or thymol 

 has been added must be shut in and shaken continuously if the full anti- 

 septic value of these substances is to be obtained. ^^^ 



Alexander C. Abbott, director of the Laboratory of Hygiene o£ 

 the University of Pennsylvania, heard Smith's paper at Baltimore 

 and much interested in the communication placed a student in 

 his laboratory at work on the subject. Since 1897 Abbott had been 

 receiving Smith's publications. Indeed, since 1895, B. Meade 

 Bolton, now bacteriologist of the Philadelphia Board of Health, 

 had also been receiving reprints, and in that year, 1895, in the 

 American Naturaltst,^^'' Smith, under the title, " Bactericidal 

 Action of Metals," had reviewed Bolton's published study from 

 the International Medical Magazine (December 1894), "The 

 effects of various metals on the growth of Bacteria." Some of 

 the metals tested were copper, brass, silver, gold, magnesium, zinc, 

 cadmium, mercury, bismuth, nickel, and platinum. The bacteria 

 were any or all of Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus and the colon, 

 typhoid, cholera, and anthrax bacilli. 



January 19, 1898, William Royal Stokes of the pioneering muni- 

 cipal health department of Baltimore thanked Smith for a copy 

 of " The Black Rot of Cabbage " and added, " I always read 

 your articles with great interest and envy you as working in a 

 field where the practical results are always of much great impor- 

 tance. I shall send you several reprints of some work of ours 

 as soon as they arrive." 



In 1896 Dr. Simon Flexner of Welch's pathological laboratory 

 of Johns Hopkins had answered an inquiry from Smith for galac- 

 tose, and the next year Smith began sending to Flexner, Dr. W. S. 

 Thayer, House Physician of the Hospital, as well as Drs. Hurd 

 and Welch reprints of his publications. To E. B. Shuttleworth, 

 bacteriologist of Trinity College at Toronto, J. J. Mackensie, 



"= op. cit., 74-75. 



^"29(346): 933-936, Oct. 1, 1895. 



