456 First European Journey 



a copy of his bulletin 255 which contained photomicrographs 

 illustrating and confirming his statements. Since the address he, 

 Brown, and McCuUoch had stained,^' they believed, the organism 

 within the cells. Of the " intracellular bacteria," he added. 



They are not very numerous, and have the same forms as in our flask 

 cultures, growing under unfavorable conditions, i. e., they are club-shaped, 

 y-shaped, and variously branched, just as they are in the old flasks, and in 

 young test-tube cultures when exposed to dilute acetic acid, where- also 

 they are either dead or develop slowly on agar plates just as they do in a 

 large proportion of the cases when plated out of the tumors. 



In his address he had pointed out that, 



Various researchers on cancer have mentioned finding rod-shaped and 

 Y-shaped bodies in cancer cells. For example, Dr. Borrell, of the Pasteur 

 Institute in Paris, and Dr. Reese, working in the cancer laboratory at 

 Buffalo. 



In 1912 the Ambassador of the government of France invited 

 the United States Department of Agriculture to send Smith to 

 Paris to address the first International Congress of Comparative 

 Pathology. He did not attend the congress, which convened 

 October 17-23, but sent an address which was presented, " Le 

 Cancer est-il Une Maladie du Regne Vegetal ?"^^ Dr. Borrel 

 addressed the meeting on " Le Cancer " and recognized Smith's 

 crovvm gall research as etiologically significant in the problem of 

 cancer origin. Borrel, the proponent of the ingenious hypothesis 

 of the carcinogenic virus as the cause of cancer in animals and 

 perhaps man, said of Smith's work on " cancer " of plants: " Voila 

 le premier cas d'un cancer veritable repondant a la definition du 

 cancer et cause par I'inoculation directe d'un microbe; une tumeur 

 de la betterave inoculable a la betterave par grefife et inoculable a 

 la betterave et a beaucoup d'autres vegetaux par des cultures." 



Dr. Charles Oberling, chief of the Experimental Department of 

 the Cancer Institute in Paris, in his recent book. The Riddle of 

 Cancer ^'^ describes the " classic infection hypothesis " as " imagi- 



*'' Erwin F. Smith, The staining of Bacterium tumefaciens in tissue, Phytopathology 

 2(3): 127, June 1912. 



^^ Compt. Rend. ler Congr. Internal. Path. Comparee (17-23 Oct., 1912) 2:984- 

 1002, 1914. Also, reprint, Paris, 1912, 19 pp. Borrel's address, Smith's quotation 

 therefrom: ler Cong. Int. Path, comparee, 1(2): 640-641. 



**'' Lectures, Cancer Institute of the Fac. of Med. of Paris and Fac. of Med. of 

 Teheran, transl. by Dr. W. H. Woglom, 67, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1944. 



