Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine

' S C O P E S M A G A Z I N E F E B R U A RY 2 0 13 a book on cat anatomy. Gage's real passion, however, was microscopy, and he became one of the most influential scientists of his time in advancing the use of microscopic technology in pathology and medicine. This was the revolutionary period of the discovery of the role of bacteria in infectious disease by Robert Koch and the development of immunization by Louis Pasteur; Smith's training in microscopy and pathology at Cornell would allow him to build on their work, examining bacteria and protozoa in animal tissues. At the time that Smith was finishing his year of postdoctoral training with Gage, Daniel Salmon, America's and Cornell's first DVM graduate, asked Gage to send him someone adequately trained for animal disease research to help him at the newly established Bureau of Animal Industry in Washington. Smith went to Washington without formal bacteriology training, but, after educating himself by reading the papers of Koch, Pasteur, Ehrlich, and others, he introduced bacterial culture and isolation techniques to the Bureau of Animal Industry, and by so doing made it the center of infectious disease research in the United States. Salmon had been exposed to the work of Pasteur as an undergraduate in France, and was convinced that the study of bacteria was essential for the control of animal diseases. Salmon set up an experiment station outside of Washington with an imported microscope, small laboratory, and a modest collection of journals, establishing the crucial elements necessary for Smith's discoveries. Two other Cornellians and veterinarians, Fred Kilborne (BS 1881, BVM 1885) and Cooper Curtice (Cornell BS, 1881, Columbia DVM, 1883) joined Smith over the next two years, sharing the routine clinical work and providing more time for research. What followed was one of the most remarkable periods of productivity in American medicine. At the Bureau of Animal Industry Smith pioneered technical advances in bacterial culture, discovered important disease-causing agents in swine and advanced immunization protocols. The most remarkable achievement during this period, however, was solving the riddle of Texas Fever. For many years Texas ranchers had felt that ticks were at the root of this disease, but intermediate disease vectors were unknown at that time and the notion was dismissed by the scientific community. Curtice conducted infection studies by mixing Texas and native cattle in Chicago stockyards, resulting in disease, and when Kilborne repeated the experiment with Texas cattle free of ticks, the native cows did not contract the disease. Smith meanwhile described small bodies within red cells of the infected cattle, eventually named Piroplasma Bigeminum. Smith and Kilborne, in a classic medical paper in 1891, described experiments in which Texas Fever was produced in healthy animals by the application of ticks, and healthy animals acquired the disease after being in fields in which ticks from infected animals had been placed. The paper also established the transmission of the infectious agent from a female tick to its offspring, a major advance in the field of parasitology. While the discovery of malaria overlapped these findings, the proof of transmission from mosquitoes to humans came after the work of Smith and Kilborne. Thus the transmission of what came to be known as babesiosis comprised the first proof of disease transmission by arthropods to mammals and stands as a landmark in medical discovery. Smith went on to make many other discoveries and to contribute to the production of antitoxin vaccines to many animal and human diseases. Meanwhile, having helped to identify the basis of transmission of Texas Fever, Curtice believed that the most effective way to eliminate the disease was through tick eradication. A persistent advocate of vector elimination, as opposed to host immunization, Curtice oversaw the eradication of cattle ticks in the South, and thus the elimination of bovine babesiosis from the U.S. The elimination of Texas Fever and the identification of arthropod vectors of animal and human disease rank as fundamental advances in the understanding of infectious disease mechanisms and are arguably the earliest examples of "One Medicine" in action. The contributions and collaboration of the five Cornellians— Smith, Gage, Salmon, Curtice, and Kilborne—laid the foundation for subsequent infectious disease research in the United States and the rapid advance in medical discovery in the early 20th century. Cordially, Michael I. Kotlikoff, VMD, PhD Austin O. Hooey Dean of Veterinary Medicine (This message relies heavily on the following works: "Biographical Memoir of Theobald Smith 1859-1934" by Hans Zinsser, 1936, NAS; "Theobald Smith – The discoverer of ticks as vectors of disease," by Ojan Assadian and Gerold Stanek, 2002, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift; and "Theobald Smith, 1859-1934: A Fiftieth Anniversary Tribute," by C.E. Dolman, 1984, ASM News.) |3

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