Last Work. Final Honors 649 



plnsical and hiochcinist Dr. Svantc August Arrhcnius, of Sweden, 

 also consulted Smith and in 1921 lioped some live years later to 

 work in his Laboratory of Plant Pathology " for some montiis." 

 At the Ithaca congress O. Arrhcnius submitted an invitation paper 

 on " Soil acidity, plant growth, and its practical application." On 

 November 19, 1921, after a conference with him. Smith had 

 written in his diary: "He has been for six months in Java and 

 Sumatra and has found that the tobacco soils on which tobacco 

 wilt is bad are acid soils, which agrees very well with our findings 

 in the United States. I sent him cultures of Ract[erium] sol[ana- 

 cearum] . . .-six weeks ago . . . and he says it behaved in his 

 tests the same as the Sumatra organism." 



' In April 1926 Dr. Smith received a letter from Dr. Alexis Carrel 

 of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Dr. Carrel 

 regretted that he was unable to be in Washington on April 27 to 

 hear Dr. Smith read his paper, " Changes of structure due to a 

 modified environment," before the National Academy. The sub- 

 ject interested both scientists, and he arrived on April 30 and they 

 discussed tumors and examined materials. ^'^ Smith, in his address, 

 " Recent Cancer Research," ^'^ had twice mentioned Dr. Carrel's 

 work. 



On February 25 of that year, Dr. John W. Churchman of the 

 laboratory of experimental therapeutics of Cornell medical school 

 and known for his studies of selective bactericidal properties of 

 certain aniline dyes had thanked Smith for cultures of the crown 

 gall organism and for reprints: " I have read with much interest 

 the reprints you sent me," he said. " Of course, I have followed 

 closely the extremely valuable work you have done on galls and 

 hope that I may have the pleasure of visiting your laboratory in 

 Washington and seeing some more of your work." 



Dr. Smith's laboratory remained one of plant pathology and 

 plant bacteriology to the very last year of his life. In 1927, evi- 

 dently still skeptical of the genuineness of the Blumenthal rat 

 tumor, he sent slides or sections for neoplastic diagnosis to several 

 specialists: Dr. MacCarty of the section of bio-pathology and 

 diagnosis of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Wells of the department of 

 pathology of the University of Chicago, Dr. Lewis of the depart- 



^'* Letter, Apr. 26, 1926; Diary, Apr. 30, 1926. 

 "* Op. cit., 247, 254. 



