602 Third European Journey 



On the George Washington, he became acquainted with several 

 distinguished passengers: Dr. Oswald S. Lowsley, urologist of 

 New York and consulting surgeon of the steamship company, 

 one Dr. Young of Montreal who had been at Johns Hopkins and 

 was now going to Paris to study anatomy of the brain, and others. 

 One afternoon he showed his crown gall photographs to the two 

 doctors. 



Straightway after arriving in Paris, Dr. Smith went to the Pas- 

 teur Institute where he met Dr. A. Besredka. To him and one of 

 his students, Dr. Harry Platz, a few days later he showed his crown 

 gall photographs. Dr. Besredka, at the time, was preparing a book 

 on " Local Immunity," a subject which Smith believed opened 

 " a vast field for study." '* In an address he later spoke of this 

 as an important advance of the decade and described Besredka's 

 theory as showing that " bacteria deadly in certain tissues are 

 harmless when placed in other tissues." For instance, the anthrax 

 organism " kills when placed in the skin but is harmless when 

 placed in wounded muscles, liver, lungs or other internal organs. 

 This tissue resistance [is] called ' local immunity.' " 



Dr. Besredka presented Smith with a copy of his Histoire d' unc 

 Idee Lceuvre de Metclmikojj (1921) . The great Elie Metchnikoff, 

 " founder and defender of the phagocytic theory," ^^ the dis- 

 coverer of phagocytosis, and former vice-director of the Pasteur 

 Institute, had died in 1916. He had written a book on the subject 

 of Immunity, and Emile Duclaux, director of the Institute until 

 1904, in his book on Pasteur, ^*^ had devoted fully one-half of his 

 discussion of viruses and vaccines to immunological problems. 



On September 17 Smith learned that one Dr. S. Metalnikoff, 

 now five years with the Institute, had " been making experiments 

 with Bacterium tumejaciens on the larvae of the wax-moth," and 

 the next day he saw " smears made from worms injected " with the 

 crown gall organism. He examined also " smears and beautifully 

 stained sections of larvae infected with the human tubercle 

 organism. In a few hours," he noted, 



the bacteria are all picked up by phagocytes and destroyed. I never before 

 saw phagocytes so literally stuffed full of bacteria. In a few days they are 



^* Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 41. Also, Journal, Feb. 10, 1925. 



^^ V. C. Vaughan, A doctor's memories, op. cit., 139. 



^'^ Pasteur, The history of a mind, op. cit., 8th part, 299-321. 



