RnsGARCH ON Plant Tumors 487 



drui; was manufactured and marketed.'" Durini; his lifetime other 

 outstanding achievements in medicine were announced and made 

 available. "' One of the great advances of human medicine in this 

 decade," he said in 1926,'" " has been the preparation of insulin 

 by Banting and Best, of Toronto, from animal pancreas (1922) 

 for the treatment of diabetes." 



Smith seldom studied experimentally questions of antagonism 

 among the bacteria, although while studying soil parasites he 

 became aware of great possibilities from such study. Often sym- 

 biotic diseases, Ardisias, Pavettas, etc., interested him. The era of 

 sulfanilamide and sulfa drugs post-dated his life. Nevertheless, 

 in direct and incidental ways, he contributed knowledge which 

 has proved valuable in modern antibiotical research. We shall 

 consider some instances soon, and much of the rest of this book 

 will show some of the groundwork that was prepared. 



While discussing acquired resistance to, and immunity from, 

 diseases in plants, he had written on " antibodies," and called the 

 subject of extreme interest theoretically and an almost wholly 

 unworked field. Whether an attack by a disease confers immunity, 

 in plants as in animals and man, was negatived by him, although 

 he illustrated from his studies of crown gall and olive tubercle 

 some conclusions which pointed to a " supposed " increased re- 

 sistance after repeated inoculations. He admitted that another 

 explanation was plausible. The observed phenomenon might also 

 have been due to a loss of virulence by the parasites." 



In 1909 he and Miss Hedges had published on a " Diplodia 

 Disease of Maize," ■*- caused by a soil organism like the fusarium. 

 The fungus and its manner of infection were studied, and they 

 suggested that it might be the 



cause of the so-called "" cornstalk " disease prevalent among cattle in the 

 west. It is also possible that to Diplodia should be referred the great 

 numbers of deaths of negroes in the south during the past three years from 

 the so-called pellagra, following the consumption of moldy corn-meal and 

 moldy hominy. This fungus {Diplodia) is also a cause of moldy corn in 

 Italy. The only other fungi we have reason for suspecting in this connec- 



'* S. Epstein and B. Williams, Miracles from microbes, The road to streptomycirj, 

 99 f., New Brunswick, Rutgers Univ. Press, 1946; J. D. Ratcliff, op. cit. 

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

 " Bact. in rel. to pi. dis., op. cit., 2: 93-94. 

 ^'^ Science, n. s., 30(758): 60-61, July 9, 1909. 



