354 Chief of a Laboratory of Plant Pathology 



received his degree of doctor of medicine and became resident 

 gynecologist of the hospital, later instructor in gynecology in the 

 university. He may have continued to study sporotrichosis, for, 

 Smith, later speaking^* of this work, said: 



In 1900 a fungus, identified by the writer as Sporotricum, was found, 

 by Schenck of Johns Hopkins, to be the cause of chronic human abscesses, 

 and since that time several hundred cases have been observed and a con- 

 siderable literature has developed, mostly American and French. The 

 parasite enters through wounds, often very slight ones, and the remedy is 

 heavy doses of potassium iodide. Many other fungous parasites occur on 

 man and other vertebrates, and they are nowhere studied at present (1926) 

 as they should be. Thaxter has monographed those occurring on insects 

 and arachnids (the Laboulbeniales) . 



On April 20, 1901, Dr. H. M. Hurd, superintendent of Johns 

 Hopkins Hospital, wrote Smith: " I think your researches in Plant 

 Pathology throw a great deal of light upon pathogenic bacteria; 

 at least they have illuminated the subject in my mind more than 

 anything else which I have read, and I congratulate you upon 

 your thorough and successful work." 



Smith always had wanted to study bacteriology under Dr. 

 Welch. In 1902 a special reason was indicated why such further 

 special study was desirable and, writing the great teacher, he 

 received the following reply: 



You are welcome to anything we can offer you, and so far as my lectures 

 are concerned you can attend them without charge. But I do not believe 

 that you would find anything worth coming here for. I teach very little 

 by lectures, almost entirely by laboratory work. The arrangement is this: 

 From October to Christmas we give the laboratory course in bacteriology. 

 I usually give one or two lectures a week in connection with this course 

 on infection and immunity, taking up particularly topics not sufficiently 

 dealt with in the students' text-books. From January first to June is the 

 course in pathology, consisting of three half days' laboratory work a week. 

 Before each exercise either one of the assistants or I give a brief talk — 

 fifteen or twenty minutes usually — on the topics to be studied that day in 

 the laboratory. ... I give, therefore, no systematic course of lectures on 

 pathology, and I do not think that you would find it to your profit to 

 attend the scattered, irregular ones I give to supplement the laboratory 

 work. If you cared to take the laboratory course, the one given by one 



*® Fifty years of pathology, op. cii., 31. See also, Science, August 15, 1947, on, 

 The differentiation of the pathogenic species of Sporotrichum, by H. L Lurie, where 

 it is said that the tendency now is to regard all such species pathogenic to man as 

 one species. 



