452 First European Journey 



the Minneapolis meetings the year before, especially that between 

 fifty and seventy botanists were in attendance. The charter mem- 

 bership of the American Phytopathological Society numbering 

 about one hundred and thirty plant pathologists now exceeded . 

 two hundred. That Dr. Farlow " received twice as many votes 

 for president (of the Botanical Society of America) as anyone 

 else " also pleased Smith. Programs of three societies of botanists — 

 Section G, the Botanical Society of America, and the American 

 Phytopathological Society — was " an embarrass de richesses,'^ he 

 jubilated to Thaxter. Smith had two leading articles in the first 

 issue of Phytopathology, one on Anton de Bary and the other on 

 "" Crown Gall of Plants," and the next year he would contribute 

 several more to the journal, one on '" Woronin," another leading 



article. 



In 1911 Peyton Rous published in the Journal of the American 

 Medical Association ''' upon the " Transmission of a malignant 

 new growth by means of a cell-free filtrate." Up to this time, 

 pathologists had been agreed 



that only by means of living cells can neoplasms be transferred from one 

 animal to another. This observation discouraged completely all idea of a 

 virus, for if one did exist it should be separable from the cells under suit- 

 able conditions and tumors should therefore be transmissible with filtrates. 

 But all such attempts failed until 1911, when Rous transferred in this way 

 a sarcoma of the breast muscles in a Plymouth Rock hen . . . Rous's first 

 papers aroused little interest, and as the infection hypothesis had always 

 been vigorously opposed the general attitude was one of skepticism.^^ 



At first, Smith's " idea that crown gall of plants resembles 

 malignant human tumors and [could] be made to throw a flood 

 of light on the origin of the latter [had] received only a cool 

 welcome." ^" 



But by 1911, when Smith, Brown, and Townsend's bulletin 213, 

 " Crown-gall of plants: its cause and remedy," was published, 

 the theory began to receive " respectful attention." One reason 

 appears to have been a revival of interest in the parasitic theory 

 and virus hypothesis of the origin of cancer. Smith recognized 



*" 56: 198. 



^^ Charles Oberling, M. D. (translated by William H. Woglom, M. D.), The 

 riddle of cancer, 130, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1944. 



^^ E F. Smith, N. A. Brown, L. McCuUoch, The structure and development of 

 crown gall: a plant cancer. Bull. 255, U. S. D. A. Bur. of PI. Ind., 11-12. 



