638 Third European Journey 



receiving another letter and reprint from him, Smith was writing 

 in his diary, "They have obtained the bacillus PM from another 

 human cancer." On August 20, 1926,^*^ before the International 

 Congress of Plant Sciences, Smith would say of this work: 



Blumenthal and his associates in Berlin have . . . isolated what appear 

 to be strains of [Bacfer/um tuniefacieiis'] from human tumors and with 

 them have produced tumors in plants and malignant tumors in rats. Very 

 recently, Dr. Fritz Kaufmann, of Koch's Institute for Infectious Diseases 

 in Berlin, has isolated an organism, said by him to belong to the B. 

 tumejaciens group, from a carcinoma of the mouse (Ehrlich strain) and 

 with it has produced tumors in plants. 



In this address. Dr. Smith admitted that the " bulk of medical 

 opinion at present may be said to favor the view that malignant 

 tumors in man are due to a variety of long-continued local irrita- 

 tions rather than to any specific parasites. Favoring this view, 

 which I do not share," he continued, " is the fact that cancers may 

 be produced in experimental animals by tar-painting, by extracts 

 of soot, and by other chemical substances applied repeatedly." "^ 



In July 1925, a year before, almost to the month, he had ordered 

 a copy of the London Lancet ^^° and, after studying the substance 

 of a recent paper by Drs. Gye and Barnard, exclaimed in his 

 diary: ^^^ " It marks even a greater advance forward than I 

 expected. [Gye] says there are two factors concerned in tumor 

 production (l) the living virus which is non-specific and (2) a 

 chemical stimulant derived from the tumor tissue which is narrowly 

 specific." Late that year Dr. Smith was invited to participate in a 

 symposium on the Cancer Problem, held in conjunction with the 

 meeting of the American Society of Zoologists. He could not be 

 present. But he sent Dr. Stockard his address, " Recent Cancer 

 Research," ^" and a telegram the substance of which became its 

 final paragraph. In November, Dr. Murray's Twenty-third Annual 

 Report of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund had been published, 

 and Dr. Smith quoted an excerpt which began: "-^ 



The essence of Dr. Gye's conception is that malignant growth results 



^** Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 45. 



^" Idem. 



^""July 18, 1925. 



"^ Diary, July 30, 1925. 



'^^''- Amer. Naturalist 60: 240 f., May- June 1926. 



^"^Idem, 254. 



