Further Ri-srARCHns in Disi:ases of Plants 561 



Marsh of the New Wnk State histitutc for Study of Malii;nant 

 Disease congratulated Smith on presenting " what we need. With 

 Fibiger's trvvo summaries of experimental cancer research in French 

 and German and yours in Fnglisii, workers can take stock in three 

 languages." 



On December 2, en route to Detroit, Smith spent another day 

 at Buffalo with Drs. Gaylord, Simpson, Marsh, Cori, and Carey. 

 He saw some of C. A. Kofoid's slides of intestinal amoebae which 

 he thought looked " astonishingly like some of the problematic 

 cell inclusions found in breast cancer in man." While Dr. Kofoid 

 was director of the parasitological division of the California State 

 Board of Health, he maintained a laboratory to make systematic 

 examinations of persons for intestinal parasites. An extensive 

 series of papers on flagellates, amoebae, and ciliates of man and 

 other animals was published. The following December 27 Smith 

 found Kofoid at the annual meeting of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science and discussed with him his recent 

 article on Hodgkins' disease in the Journal of the American 

 Medical Association^^ A theory that the origin of this disease 

 may be associated with cells of the protozoan Endameba dysen- 

 teriae had been advanced, and Smith, after receiving Kofoid's 

 explanation, believed he had " demonstrated it. He wants," Smith 

 wrote in his diary, " a large sum of money to head a drive on 

 Cancer with a parasite in view." 



That month, in his address on twentieth-century cancer research, 

 he had described under " Worm Cancers " ^^ three main series of 

 specific experiments: " Fibiger's rat carcinoma due to cockroach- 

 nematodes," " Kopsch's frog tumors due to angleworm nema- 

 todes," and " the rat liver-cyst sarcoma due to tapeworm of the 

 cat." He introduced these more important experimental investi- 

 gations by listing instances where repeated attention had been 

 drawn to " the suspicious close association of various parasitic 

 worms " with tumors of animals and plants. " We have," he said, 



destructive nematode tumors in plants. One is due to Heterodera radicicola. 

 It occurs on the roots of a great variety of plants and is more injurious 

 than crown-gall. Structurally, the tumor is a soft, perishable, small-celled 

 connective-tissue hyperplasia containing a great many large multinucleate 



''See, Twentieth century advances in cancer research, op. cit., 303. 

 "^Ibid, 303-311. Quotation of paragraph, p. 303. 



