The Development of the Virus Concept as Reflected in Corpora of Studies on Individual Pathogenslessons of the Plant Viruses–Tobacco Mosaic Virus

Abstract

THEiE is no dearth of references to virus diseases of man in the writings of antiquity.Although caution is called for, and rash identification of clinical descriptions should be avoided, there are both individual case histories and epidemic situations mentioned in the literature of disparate cultures which suggest the presence of smallpox and rabies before 1000 B.C." By the time Celsus came to write De medicina, his observa- tions on rabies were not only superior to those of Aristotle; they were also remarkably accurate in many respects.2In contrast, plant disease, whether of viral or other origin, appears to have attracted scant attention until the sixteenth century.The De contagione et contagionis morbis et eonum curatione, published in Venice in 1546 by Girolamo Fracastoro, is claimed by historians to be a landmark in the history of bacteriology.8He included a chapter on "The analogy of contagions" in which he wrote: " . . .there is a certain pest which attacks trees and crops, but harms no sort of animal; again, there is a pest which attacks certain animals but spares trees and crops.In the animal world, one pest will attack man, another cattle, another horses, and so on ... ."4Fracastoro was aware of the transmission of "contagions" by contact, mentioning for example phthisis, pestilent fevers, and smallpox; in one chapter he speculated on the possibility of infections spreading from fruit to fruit, i.e. grape to grape, apple to apple, etc., in a similar way., The larger fruits understandably lent themselves more easily to observation, and the extent of observation was in some measure determined by the importance of individual crops.Today, Fracastoro's remarks may appear as no

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