11 
tions which he often traces to the use of food of one 
sort or another, which in some cases the idiosyncrasy 
of the patient reacts to in rather a marked way, an 
it is only a few years since a professor in the Harvard 
Medical School ‘published an exhaustive treatise on 
_ the plants which — such effects. A few plants, 
like the poison ivy, are very pronounced estntaaki irri- 
very m 
know the effect of pertain drugs, ther than to have 
a botanic knowledge of the irritant. 
With the growing Leabledes of bacteria, coud 
a more directly necessary branch of medic tany 
seems to be opening up. It is not sates for the 
ad. 
only after a_bacte poser examination 
sen ie Widal test = typhoid fever now has 
me into general use, n the case of cholera and 
a onihieea it is, I believe. patient recognized that 
an easily made pure culture of bacteria from the 
patient affords the surest and i quickest Eatanaation as 
to the positive occurrence o 
Today I suppose that there is not a good medical 
bacteriologic laboratory. The teaching needed for 
this branch of aeciont: botany, like that needed for 
the older medical botany, which is now more properly 
regarded as pharmaceutic botany, ought to be of the 
most directly practical kind. A knowledge of meth- 
ods firs 
Some bacteria, the ordinary aerobic species, are so 
enuy isolated and grown in pure cultures that the 
eans of doing this ought to be at the hand of ag d 
sri though I observe that certain boards 
