500 Second European Journey 



This year's work on crown gall has been more interesting to me than 

 work of any previous year for two reasons. First, I have found a new type 

 of the tumor full of abortive sprouts, and second, I have been able to 

 produce small tumors with by-products of the bacterial growth i. e. by 

 chemicals, the bacteria being absent. 



This summer I have obtained many fine teratoid tumors on tobacco and 

 on Pelargonium by inoculating the crowngall bacteria into the cut end of 

 stems (middle of internodes) and some of these internodal tumors have 

 given 500 separate buds. The thing is so astonishing that I would not have 

 believed it possible. 



Plant anatomist Irving W. Bailey of the Bussey Institution for 

 Research in Applied Biology had begun to exchange scientific 

 materials and papers with Smith. Physiologist W. B. Cannon of 

 Harvard Medical School continued to express his appreciation. 

 Dr. Adami, novv^ with the medical service of the Canadian armed 

 forces overseas, sent an " Hurrah! I am sure that you are on the 

 right track and to me it is peculiarly delightful that this experi- 

 mental confirmation is obtained in a sister science." June 22 he 

 had writen again that Smith's papers were 



extraordinarily interesting and [he had} read them with intense apprecia- 

 tion, more especially as these teratoid studies seem to support my view 

 that it is not so much the presence of the actual irritant or stimulant within 

 the cells that is to be regarded as the essential factor as that, to employ 

 your words, the changed stimulus (which may, as in your cases, be of 

 microbic origin, or in other cases may be of other nature) induces the 

 growth habit, which once properly started, continues with the development 

 of a tumour mass. I am glad to see in your Journal of Cancer Research 

 paper, page 253, that your observations are leading in this direction. I do 

 most heartily congratulate you. These teratoid Crown Galls are a splendid 

 advance forwards. 



Chemist Jerome Alexander of New York City, pioneer worker 

 with the ultramicroscope in America, in June 1916, believing that 

 Smith was opening up a new way toward solving the cancer 

 problem, offered to cooperate with him in examining specimens 

 with the use of the ultramicroscope. M. C. Marsh, biologist of 

 the New York State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease, 

 located at the Gratwick Laboratory at Springville, where Dr. 

 Gaylord was still director, read Smith's article in Science, " Fur- 

 ther evidence that crown gall of plants is cancer," and was moved 

 to write on July 16, " That paper I hope and think is a beacon 

 light in circumambient darkness. My congratulations. I have been 



