522 Crown Gall-Animal Cancer Analogy 



cancer analogy had been steadily accumulating. Among botanists 

 the response was reassuringly vigorous. On the Pacific coast, 

 Director H. J. Webber of the Riverside Citrus Experiment Station 

 of the college of agriculture of the University of California found 

 Smith's monograph " characteristic of the thorough work " he had 

 always done. Venus Pool McKay of the Oregon agriculture college 

 at Corvallis wrote that she had " practically " worded ' through " 

 his article. '" Now," she said, 



I am wondering if any one would dare go so far to say that in peculiar 

 cases of malnutrition, the resistance of the animal cell becomes lowered 

 and proliferation results. This process then is kept stimulated by the NH3 

 radical which is constantly being cut off from some complex ammonium 

 compound formed from the malnutrition condition. If so, then a changed 

 nutrition should give a restored resistance and an inhibition of cell pro- 

 liferation. A great field for thought and serious endeavor, that you have 

 opened up. 



P. J. O'Gara, chief pathologist in charge of the agricultural 

 investigations of the American Smelting and Refining Company, 

 with laboratories and experiment station at Salt Lake City, 

 addressed a six-paged single-spaced typewritten letter to Smith, 

 and described the results of his researches, made over three years, 

 " determining the effects of dilute concentrations of sulphur di- 

 oxide gas on the growing organism " — wheat, oats, barley, corn, 

 red clover, alfalfa, sugar beets, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, and 

 other plants. On January 7, 1921, O'Gara visited Smith in his 

 laboratory, gave him a specimen of an Arizona disease of Pinus 

 ponderosa " supposed to be bacterial," and further described his 

 experiments on crop injuries due to " SO2 diffusion in air." Smith 

 thought it " a remarkable piece of research." No bacteria in the 

 pine disease, however, were found. 



B. W. Wells, of the department of botany of the University of 

 Chicago, at the time completing a thesis on galls, believed that 

 Smith's paper constituted " a real and highly significant advance 

 toward the solution of what Kiister calls the ' kataplasma ' type 

 of gall or those forms in which the tissue suffers an interference 

 with the normal inhibitors present and proceeds to develop a 

 structure approximating the normal." 



At a faculty seminar at the University of Pennsylvania, Smith's 

 papers on plant overgrowths were discussed, especially the reasons 



