Ri-snARCH ON Plant Tumors •iR'i 



into plants. Likewise, lie had to know his subject thoroughly to 

 elaborate summary research results from the comparatively un- 

 explored lield of plants as carriers of disease. 



It was as late as 1912 before the existence of the first vitamin 

 was definitely proved — " as a something, a quality, a property, 

 or perhaps a substance, which some foods had and others did not. 

 Other vitamins," Leonard A. Maynard ^- has pointed out, " became 

 thus recognized in succeeding years, but it was not until the organic 

 chemist commenced to give these " somethings " attention that 

 the field really moved. It was over 15 years after the first vitamin 

 was discovered tlwt the chemical nature of any of them was 

 definitely established. In the succeeding years, isolation, determi- 

 nation of structure, and, frequently, synthesis followed increasingly 

 closely on the biologists' discoveries." In 1912, radiology, emerging 

 from the discovery of " X-rays " so-called in 1895 and the discovery 

 of radium in 1898, was comparatively still an infant science.^^ 



Smith admitted ^* that a more thorough knowledge of bio- 

 chemistry and biophysics greatly would have helped him: " Handi- 

 caps have been," he confessed, " first, insufficient mathematical 

 physics; second, insufficient biochemistry. But perhaps if I had 

 specialized on these subjects, I should in the end have been like 

 one of my teachers w^io decided he would be a naturalist but must 

 first get a good ground-work in Latin and Greek. The result was 

 that he never passed on into a study of nature but became a 

 teacher of the classics. Moral: There is not room in one short life 

 for everything." Dr. Smith considered that, after all, his " most 

 important work [had] been the stimulating of other persons to 

 undertake researches first in [his] own laboratory and then 

 through [his] wTitings and teachings in many other laboratories." 



This was written in 1922 and he lived only five more years. 

 The search for chemo-therapeutical remedies against disease had 

 been started many years before, but was chiefly a work of medical 

 research. Smith's interest in the causes of diseases, human, animal, 



'" Director of the School of Nutrition, Cornell University, A chemist's view of 

 nutrition, Science 105(27): 399-403, Jan.- June 1947. Address given before the New 

 York Section of the American Chemical Society, December 6, 1946. The discovery 

 of vitamins by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins of England traces to the year 1906 

 (T/we, May 26, 1947 issue). 



^^ Douglas James Guthrie, A history of medicine, op. cit., 384-385. 



^* Synopsis of researches, o[). cit., 45-46. 



