28 JOURNAL OF THE 



number of ne\v species, as well as determined the old ones, and amassed an 

 ample collection, the preservation of which is most importiint, comprising, as it 

 does, the specimens, drawings and original notes which are to authenticate his 

 work. By his unremitting and well directed labors, filling the intervals of an 

 honored and faithful professional life, he has richly earned the gratitude of the 

 present and ensuing generations of botanists." 



(Am, lour, of Science. Third series. Vol. V. No. 29, May, 1873.) 



During Dr. Curtis' lifetime very little attention had been paid to 

 the life-history of fungi by the medical profession. The theory of 

 contagium vivum was barely foreshadowed by J. K. Mitchell, and 

 afterwards by Salisbury, but so crude was the botany of even these 

 writers, that they made but little impression upon the medical pro- 

 fession, and only excited the mild derision of the real botanists. I 

 well remember upon one occasion when a group of doctors had 

 accidentally met at the office of a brother physician, and were ad- 

 miring the beautiful microscopic appearance of several fungi, espe- 

 cially the Oidium albicans, as figured in the book of the season — 

 Beale on the ''Microscope in Practical Medicifie.'" This fungus 

 was supposed to i^tand in relation of a causative agent in muguet or 

 thrush. Dr. Curtis came up in the midst of our discussion of the 

 subject, and at once recognized a very familiar fungus and made it 

 very clear to us that fungus spores only found lodgment when the 

 soil was prepared to receive it, and that we must beware of a two 

 hasty conclusion of the disease-carrying properties of the fungi. 

 Oidium was found in the mouth of the baby with thrush because 

 there was a condition precedent which favored its lodgm^ent, and so 

 far from being the cause of the disease, it was the result of the dis- 

 ease. His familiarity with the forms, which to doctors who had 

 been four years cut off from medical literature, was truly wonderful, 

 but was a pretty clear statement of the general principles which 

 to-day are held by some of the best thinkers in the medical profes- 

 sion. 



1 have spoken of Dr. Curtis' splendid achievements, his scientific 

 precision, his ardor in the pursuit of natural history, his completion 

 of a botanical survey almost to the remotest domain of the lowest 

 microscopic plant, but I would not have you believe that this was 

 the sum of his life work. Botanical science was his pastime and 

 recreation. In the mission he had chosen as a servant of Christ, 

 he was no sluggard. He was a pioneer missionary in the rugged 

 hills of North Carolina, when to be a pioneer was to suffer hardship 

 and privation. Love and sympathy beamed from his benignant 

 face, and wherever he went his Master's mission of " Peace on earth 



