486 Second European Journey 



or plant, was always accompanied by an equally strong interest 

 in remedies or control methods. In 1919 Noguchi had isolated 

 from yellow fever cases a flagellate protozoan, Leptospira icter- 

 o'tdes. Smith believed this to be " the probable cause of the 

 disease." In the early 1920's, Drs. G. F. Dick and G. H. Dick, 

 American medical scientists of Chicago, found a streptococcus in 

 scarlet fever. Smith believed this " probably " the disease's cause, 

 since the streptococcus was shown to be unvaryingly present and 

 its behavior indicated it as the cause.^^ This discovery led to the 

 elaboration of a susceptibility test for scarlet fever comparable to 

 the Bela Schick susceptibility test for diphtheria.^* E. C. Rosenow's 

 studies of facial infection, endocarditis and arthritis during this 

 decade 1917-1926 also interested Smith.^' 



Experimental research in antibiotics emerged into definite notice 

 after Sir Alexander Fleming observed in 1928 that when a culture 

 plate fluid containing staphylococcal colonies was contaminated 

 by spores of a species of PeniciUium {Penktllhim notatiwi), the 

 staphylococci near the mold began to show signs of dissolving. 

 For years botanists had noticed that when a bread mold culture 

 was introduced on a seeded plate of bacteria a clear area around 

 the mold colony often resulted. In 1877 Pasteur and Joubert had 

 suggested a possible therapeutical importance from their observa- 

 tion that the growth of certain air-borne organisms inhibited the 

 growth of the anthrax bacillus. John Tyndall had mentioned an 

 observed " struggle for existence between the Bacteria and the 

 PeniciUium" in his 1881 Essays on the Vloating Matter of the 

 Air in Relation to Putrefaction and Infection.^^ Yet the production 

 of the therapeutical medicine or drug, penicillin, eluded mastery 

 until after Fleming had investigated this " new bacterial inhibitor " 

 further. Fleming's initial report was not published until 1929, two 

 years after Dr. Smith died. After the report a decade of more 

 studies by other workers, especially research in the clinical uses 

 of the isolated product penicillin, followed before the medical 



^® Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 41. 



^^ Justina Hamilton Hill, Germs and the man, 34 ff., 96. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 

 1940. 



" Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 41. 



^*H. Landsberg, Prelude to the discovery of penicillin, his 40, pt. 3(121): 225- 

 227, Aug. 1949. 



