RELATION OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY TO OTHER SCIENCES. 435 



thing outside of the circle of that systematic botany which deals only 

 in nomenclature." 



This rebuke did not pass without effect. A student of Schleiden's, 

 the honored anatomist, Hermann Schacht, taught how to identify the 

 commoner fibers used in spinning by microscopical characters. Soon 

 from Austria strong impulse and effective work appeared along these 

 lines, where, by the' use of methods of investigation practiced by plant 

 anatomists, the foundation was laid for technical microscopy and the 

 technical study of raw material in the plant kingdom, which two 

 studies were first placed in the curriculum of the technical high schools 

 of Austria. 



Through the use of plant physiology in questions of practical life 

 this science came to be an aid in the administration of justice. The 

 courts request from plant physiologists as from chemists professional 

 opinions, and more than once has the botanical institute of our univer- 

 sity been in a position to respond to the requests of the court. 



Botany, as is well known, came early to be a strong aid in the medi- 

 cal science, which encouraged not plant physiology but systematic 

 botany — in fact, called it into existence. What the diggers of roots and 

 herb dealers in the Grecian age began, Hippocrates and other Grecian 

 physicians continued, namely, the search for plants with healing quali- 

 ties, the naming and distinguishing of which appeared in the most 

 thoroughly collaborated materia medica of Dioscorides. Until the 

 period of the reawakening of the arts and sciences, this work formed 

 the chief source of botanical knowledge. The repayment of this great 

 debt of botany to medical science was made, however, not so much by 

 the immediate debtor — systematic botany — but chiefly through plant 

 physiology. Let the science of medicine always remember that the 

 subject of bacteriology, now become so important, owes its origin to 

 botanists. It was not merely that bacteria were first differentiated by 

 botanists, it was likewise a botanist, the late Ferdinand Oohu, director 

 of the Institute for Plant Physiology in Breslau, who first recognized 

 bacteria as the cause of diseases. It was he, also, who originated the 

 well known generic names of bacilli, micrococci, and bacteria. What 

 importance bacteriology has come to assume in the diagnosis and 

 etiology of disease, for hygiene, and other branches of medicine is gen- 

 erally known. 



Likewise those branches of plant culture which gave the first 

 impulse toward the establishment of plant physiology have in turn 

 been richly repaid for all the suggestions and usable facts which they 

 furnished. Agriculture, forestry, and horticulture are to-day per- 

 meated by the spirit of plant physiology, and what these practical 

 studies have gained in scientific insight is for the most part due to 

 plant physiology. It must be said also that agricultural chemistry has 

 contributed materially to the principles of plant culture, but the one- 



