ABSTRACT
Development of modern plant pathology had to wait for a sufficient foundation to be laid in botany and other sciences from which it derives its roots. This, in turn, had to await a change in intellectual climate that could make it possible to break the bonds of scholarticism, dogma, and inertia and to initiate free inquiry into natural phenomena. The 16th century work, which was done largely in response to the urge of medicine, aroused a new interest in botany and added to the foundations for the great movement in description, naming, and classification of plants that proved to be the first step in the development of modern botany. De Tournefort (1705 AD) divided plant diseases into two classes; the first is due to the internal causes and the second to external causes. The development of mycology was highly essential for the progress of plant pathology.
