May 22, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



751 



runners in medicine what they are to us. 

 Without a wide and deep social yision the 

 doctor of the future will not be what he should 

 be. Medicine is becoming more and more 

 social. Its function is becoming more and 

 more one of prevention. And a deeper insight 

 into human nature, and a keener understand- 

 ing of all the sciences, particularly the biologic, 

 will be demanded of the man who will succeed. 

 Paul G. Woollet 

 University of Cincinnati 



PROFESSOR THEOBALD SMITE AND A NEW 

 OUTLOOK IN ANIMAL FATROLOGY 



The recent announcement of an additional 

 endowment to the Rockefeller Institute for 

 Medical Research, for the establishment of a 

 department of animal pathology, marks a far- 

 seeing and helpful recognition of the impor- 

 tance of a phase of research now scantily sup- 

 ported, yet full of promise for the physical 

 and economic welfare of mankind and the 

 well-being of animalkind also. But as the 

 success of such an undertaking is after all 

 more a matter of men than of money, the news 

 that the projected department is to be organ- 

 ized and conducted by Professor Theobald 

 Smith, of Harvard University, is of the happi- 

 est augury. 



Though long in the foremost rank of the 

 notables of science in America, the work of 

 Professor Smith has not often secured, or 

 suffered, popular exposition. But he has had 

 the uncommon satisfaction of seeing, many 

 times, the lines of thought and research which 

 he has opened lead sooner or later to far- 

 reaching theoretical development and practical 

 achievements. 



Thus while Dr. Smith was yet a subordi- 

 nate in the Bureau of Animal Industry in 

 Washington, he had occasion to study the 

 Texas fever of cattle, then the cause of great 

 economic loss to the farmers and cattle-men 

 of that as well as other states, and of coun- 

 tries the world over. He found at last that the 

 disease was incited by a protozoan parasite so 

 small that it found a spacious abode within 

 the purlieus of a single red cell of the blood, 

 which it ruthlessly destroyed. 



Smith and Kilborne announced also that 

 this piroplasma, as it was called, is conveyed 

 from animal to animal through the interven- 

 tion of a cattle tick in which the protozoan 

 undergoes a developmental cycle upon which 

 the perpetuation of its kind depends. They 

 further learned that cattle recovered from the 

 fever had become immune, and though well, 

 might indefinitely carry the piroplasma in the 

 blood and be a perpetual source of infection 

 for cattle fresh from another district. 



This surprising, unprecedented, and, as it 

 seemed to many at the time, unnecessarily 

 complex and rather preposterous mode of in- 

 fection made good its claims, and Texas fever 

 leads the line of infectious diseases in men and 

 animals, in which some insect acts as inter- 

 mediary host and sole conveyancer of infective 

 microbes from their sources to fresh victims. 

 Thus in malaria and in yellow fever it is the 

 mosquito which is to blame, and its suppres- 

 sion in any country insures virtual emancipa- 

 tion from these diseases. Thus have Cuba and 

 Panama been rescued, and the way is open for 

 the control of other tropical infections in other 

 lands. Thus also the infective agents of 

 plague and typhus and other communicable 

 maladies are harbored and dispersed by insects 

 which are the vulnerable links in the chain 

 of infection often most easily broken through 

 sanitary control. 



The story of all these practical achievements 

 in disease prevention through the knowledge 

 and control of insect pests, leads back twenty 

 years and more to the hot and gloomy garret 

 in Washington, then the laboratory of the 

 Bureau of Animal Industry, and to Dr. 

 Smith's parasitic cattle tick harboring its own 

 invisible protozoan parasite. And Texas fever 

 no longer exacts its toll from man or beast; 

 or if it does it is the man's fault. These im- 

 mune cattle, bearers of the, to them, innocuous 

 parasite, head the procession of " carriers " of 

 infective agents, in which humans are now 

 known to hold a conspicuous place, and are 

 the bugbears of preventive medicine to-day. 



Almost as soon as Koch had shown the world 

 how easily and accurately to cultivate bac- 

 teria, more than thirty years ago, in the very 



