526 Crown Gall-Animal Cancer Analogy 



probably in all other plants, and presumably also in all animals, 

 since a great many plants and animals are known to give rise 

 readily to adventive buds even under a slight stimulus, e. g., 

 willows and begonias; hydras and tubularias. Just what the stim- 

 ulus is in many cases," he had said, 



remains to be worked out. The shoots are especially apt to appear when 

 the plant or animal has been wounded or otherwise thrown out of balance. 

 Such shoots are normal, or pathological only to the extent of being more 

 or less fused, crowded, distorted and starved. For these reasons some of 

 them should undoubtedly be classed as typical (non-cancerous) teratoids. 

 Several interesting cases in plants have come to the writer's attention 

 lately. . . . These are on tomato, cauliflower, cabbage, pond lily, etc. In 

 one very curious variety of begonia (Begonia phyllomaniaca) buds in 

 great numbers grow out of many parts of the leaf and stem on the slightest 

 provocation.^ 



He wrote the preface of his textbook, Introduction to Bacterial 

 Diseases of Plants, in August of 1920. He had completed the 

 manuscript in 1915 but revised it twenty times, re-read galley-, 

 proof five or six times, and page-proof three or four times; and 

 he said that his manuscript was to be construed as " revised down 

 to the end " of the year 1919- 



His address, " Production of Tumors in the Absence of Para- 

 sites," ' was read on May 1, 1920, before the Section on Derma- 

 tology and Syphilology at the seventy-first annual session of the 

 American Medical Association, held at New Orleans, Louisiana. 

 The subtitle of his paper was " Varieties of Tumors in Plants," 

 and, when outlining his conclusions from fifteen years of study 

 of crown gall, he included on the authority of Jensen the point that 

 this " tumor possesses the power of continuous growth through 

 several generations." "" In his text book of the same year, more- 

 over, he said: '" Whether the cells thus originated may then con- 

 tinue to grow in the absence of the parasite, as Jensen believes, 

 is a subject for further consideration." " Plant tumors, he said, 

 were attributable to a variety of living causes: gall flies, plant lice, 

 nematodes, fungi, myxomycetes, and bacteria. Frost (Harvey) 

 and mechanical irritation (Wolf) could also cause tumors in 



^Idem, reprint, 5-6; or p. 279 of Bulletin, fn. 4. 



"Archives of Dermatology and Syphilology 2: 176-180, Aug. 1920. 



^^ lde7n, reprint, 4. 



^^ Intro, to bact. dis. of plants, op. cit., 569. 



