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, 7. 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, 7. ¢., 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 pénétre pas dans la pulpe 
des légumes 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 comclusion, 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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