As often happens in the case of a public campaign against a serious
epidemic, we have been constantly besieged by the gratuitous offers of
various and sundry remedies for the blight, which include applications
of fertilizers to the soil, insertions of flowers of sulphur and
other compounds in holes bored in the trees, applications of coatings
of different chemicals to the body of the tree, and numerous other
treatments, all of which we believed in the beginning to have no value.
However, all parties having theories to advance or remedies to propose
have been given a chance to prove their claims by experimenting on
trees controlled by the Commission for such purposes at Emilie, Bucks
county. A number of parties have taken advantage of the opportunity.
Recently, an examination was made of the various treatments by a
competent Board of Reviewers, whose conclusion was that not one of the
treatments tried had any deterrent effect upon the chestnut blight.
Many of the persons above mentioned were apparently sincere in the
claims they made, and were simply ignorant of the true cause of the
disease. Instances have come to our attention, however, of parties
practicing certain methods of treatment and charging for the same,
who are plainly impostors. Employees of the Commission have no doubt
benefited many people by exposing the methods of these impostors.