262 



SCIENCE 



[N. S Vol. XLII. No. 1078 



agents which are to be fostered or hindered, 

 constitute the pulsating center of effort. 



The drying of some foods has been prac- 

 tised haphazardly since very ancient times ; 

 the value of heat has long been known to 

 check the advance of decomposition, even 

 long before Spallanzani in about 1770 gave 

 to the world his experiments with the pres- 

 ervation of vegetable and meat infusions ; 

 King Solomon kept snow in trenches 

 covered with bushes and leaves through 

 the summer, that he might have it to cool 

 his drinks; the use of chemical substances 

 whether for physical or toxic purposes ap- 

 pears to be of more recent origin. Even 

 though observation had divined relation- 

 ships and established limited and crude 

 practises, it is a simple truth that the food 

 industries founded upon desiccation, heat, 

 cold and chemical compounds made no 

 headway of significance until it was found 

 that underlying them was the directing 

 general principle : Food would spoil if the 

 microorganisms were allowed to develop; 

 if they were not allowed to develop it 

 would remain practically unchanged. As 

 soon as Brieger was able to point out 

 some of the toxic substances which micro- 

 bial life produced, this same principle was 

 extended to poisoning of food undergoing 

 decomposition. It was not, however, until 

 the relationship of microorganisms to dis- 

 ease was established that inspection became 

 truly effective, notwithstanding it had been 

 in operation from Biblical times in much 

 the same way as the preservation of food 

 was practised. 



I ask you to consider for a moment what 

 economic import is contained in the pre- 

 ceding paragraph. Conceive if you can the 

 amount of dried food, the number of canned 

 containers, the food consumed which has 

 been in cold storage or refrigeration, the 

 value of the preserved or brined products 

 for which you as an individual are respon- 



sible during the course of the year; you 

 will then not be surprised at the quantities 

 necessary to stock for one trip a great ship 

 which carries five thousand persons. Multi- 

 plying the individual capacity by 100,000,- 

 000, our country's capacity is ascertained. 

 What does this mean in terms of the indus- 

 tries indicated? To this add the great re- 

 duction in the number of cases of food 

 poisoning together with the elimination of 

 diseases by meat inspection; then may I 

 again ask, is it possible to grasp the full 

 force of what has been evolved by an ac- 

 quaintance with the forms, functionings 

 and habitats of microorganisms? 



It is with peculiar pride that, in passing 

 on to other matters of weight to both micro- 

 biology and agriculture I can, incidentally,, 

 pay tribute to Professor Burrill, the vener- 

 able worker who named the cause of pear 

 blight as early as 1883 when he had no 

 trail to follow; and to Erwin F. Smith, 

 who has contributed so much to the study 

 of bacterial diseases of plants through dis- 

 coveries and the organization of knowledge 

 in this field even in the face of much Ger- 

 man antagonism and criticism. Our na- 

 tional spirit may be pardoned for the 

 moment, while realizing that there are no 

 international boundaries for science. From 

 this work effective methods of control have 

 been formulated and have enabled intelli- 

 gent handling of such diseases by those 

 concerned. 



No province of microbiology even from, 

 the very beginnings of this branch of sci- 

 ence and also back through its speculative 

 stages of development, has received greater 

 attention or enrolled a larger army of in- 

 vestigators or given more important re- 

 sults than that which is commonly desig- 

 nated as medical, sanitary or hygienic. Its 

 gifts are broader than any industry, 

 greater than those of any profession, and 

 they can be measured only by the limita- 



