ARE ANY BACTERIA KNOWN TO CAUSE DISEASE IN BOTH PLANTS AND ANIMALS? 

 EVIDENCE FROM INOCULATING PLANT PARASITES INTO ANIMALS-EVIDENCE 

 FROM INOCULATING ANIMAL PARASITES INTO PLANTS-DO PLANTS HARBOR 

 ANIMAL PARASITES? 



Theoretically, this subject is of great importance. Actually, very little of positive 

 value has been developed by the studies thus far undertaken, i. e., the results in general 

 have been negative. Most bacterial plant parasites are unable to grow at blood-heat, and 

 for this reason may be regarded as harmless to man and the domestic animals. 



Most animal parasites are more or less delicately balanced to the conditions prevalent 

 in animal bodies and not to those occurring in plants, although when inoculated into 

 certain plants some of them have remained alive in the vicinity of the wound for a consider- 

 able period. 



The chief danger to health would appear to lie in the ingestion of plants whose surfaces 

 have been contaminated by animal pathogenic organisms, i.e., in the use of raw vegetables 

 and salad plants, particularly those grown on lands fertilized with untreated sewage. 

 Sewage should be sterilized before it is passed into streams or flooded upon agricultural 

 lands. Vegetables grown on lands manured with night-soil or with untreated sewage should 

 not be eaten raw. It would be entirely proper to prohibit altogether the sale of such 

 vegetables. 



The principal studies, so far as known to the writer, are summarized in the following 

 paragraphs. 



ANIMAL PARASITES INOCULATED INTO PLANTS. 



Grancher and Deschamps (1889) experimented on seedling radishes and carrots grown 

 in special boxes and watered repeatedly with typhoid cultures diluted in water (20 cultures 

 in 10 liters of sterilized water). The experiment was begun April 9 and finished June 6. 

 Nine gelatin plates were poured from the inner tissues with negative results, the plants 

 being wiped and flamed, and the pulp removed under sterile conditions. 



Tests were also made by them of radishes and carrots from the garden of the hospital 

 and of radishes, carrots, and asparagus from the municipal garden at Gennevilliers, 46 tubes 

 of peptone-gelatin and 20 flasks of bouillon being inoculated. Part of these cultures were 

 kept in the thermostat and the rest held at room temperature. All were negative. 



Conclusion : Le Bacille typhique et les microbes communs du sol ne penetre pas dans la pulpe 

 des legumes sains. 



One of the hospital radishes yielded a common organism but its pulp was probably 

 already invaded through a scratch on its surface. 



In 1890 Lominsky* published his paper in the Russian Medical Journal Wratch. It 

 is believed that a rather full account of this paper will be welcome to English readers. 



The author approaches this problem from the standpoint of a physician. If plants are capable 

 of nourishing a single organism causing animal disease, to know it is a matter of great importance. 

 It has long been known that disease-producing microbes can grow on dead vegetable matter, espe- 

 cially some culture media, e.g., cooked potato. Whether they will grow on living plants is quite 

 another matter. Up to this time living vegetables have been considered very unfavorable media 

 for the growth of bacteria. The experiments of Buchner, Lehmann, Fernbach, Miquel and 

 Grancher lead to one conclusion, viz., that vegetables, seeds and plants do not contain microbes. 

 "And, therefore," says the author, "I had in view to investigate whether the animal-pathogenic 

 bacteria are able to find in the tissue of a living and growing plant a favorable soil for their existence. " 



*Spelled also Lomnitzky, Lominskago, Lommitzky, etc. 

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