author
An early American scientist and government researcher, he wrote a detailed 1908 study on loco-weed disease in livestock and the possible role of barium in poisoning. His work captures a moment when plant pathology, toxicology, and agriculture were becoming closely linked.
Albert Cornelius Crawford was an American pharmacologist and botanist. Available records identify him as having been born in Baltimore on June 10, 1869, and trained in medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore, earning an M.D. in 1893.
His best-known surviving book is Barium, A Cause of the Loco-Weed Disease, issued in 1908 as a U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant Industry bulletin. In that publication, he is listed as a pharmacologist working in poisonous-plant investigations, and the book reflects his interest in how toxic plants and mineral compounds affected animal health.
Little biographical material is easy to confirm beyond those basics, but his published work suggests a practical, research-driven career focused on agricultural and medical science. Readers coming to his book today will find a careful early-twentieth-century investigation into a problem that mattered deeply to farmers and stock raisers in the American West.