352 Chief of a Laboratory of Plant Pathology 



maintained your position. I do not think anyone will have the 

 hardihood to repeat Fischer's Vorlesungen statement again." ^^ 



The polemic with Fischer was subordinate in importance to the 

 larger consideration of Smith's scientific proofs and completeness 

 of presentation. On August 20, 1901, G. W. Fuller of the New 

 York firm of hydraulic engineers and sanitary experts, Hering 

 and Fuller, thanked him for " a copy of Bulletin No. 28, describing 

 the cultural characters of four bacteria parasitic on plants. It is 

 certainly a very comprehensive piece of work," commented Fuller, 

 " and I desire to congratulate you upon this important addition 

 to our literature on this branch of bacteriology." 



The next day Dr. V. A. Moore sent congratulations, saying, 

 " You certainly are getting much on your side by way of research 

 work." This was written of Bulletin 28 and he liked also " the 

 excellence of Bulletin No. 26" ["Wakker's Hyacinth Germ"}, 

 concerning which he had written on March 8: "You are doing 

 good work and I guess it is well you did not leave to take a place 

 elsewhere." Dr. Moore was then working on his book, planned 

 to be " valuable for students of comparative pathology," on The 

 PatJjology and Differential Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases of 

 Animals (1902) . His Laboratory Directions for Beginners in Bac- 

 teriology had gone to a second edition and been marketed, he told 

 Smith, " the last of October. ... I am under many obligations 

 to you for the success it is having." 



Theobald Smith, from his laboratory of comparative pathology 

 at Harvard, wrote on May 16, 1901: " I am glad you took A[lfred] 

 Fischer by the ears. I have the reprints on my table to read as 

 soon as my course at the Med[ical] School is over, so that I can 

 read without interruption. I had a similar bout about ten years 

 ago. I believe the time, on the whole, well spent, although very 

 irksome to the writer." Practically a decade had passed since he 

 and Kilborne had proved that Texas cattle fever is transmitted 

 by a tick; and now the principle of their work, aside from the 

 insect transmission of plant diseases, was being applied in ques- 

 tions of the spread of human diseases. In 1899 the Johns Hopkins 

 Hospital Report ^^ published G. H. F. Nuttall's voluminous study 



«^ Letters dated July 8, 1901 (Harper), August 16, 1901 (Buller). E. M. Wilcox, 

 G. J. Peirce and other American botanists wrote Smith during this year. 

 ^"8(1-2): 1-154, with bibliography, 1899. 



