He developed improvements in the treatment of refractory ores and his advice was of great value in dealing with problems of this kind at the Sunny Corner mining-field and at Broken Hill.
[1][2] Smith took up the study of bacteriology at the suggestion of his friend James Frederick Elliott,[1] and did a large amount of research endeavouring to find a vaccine against the effects of snake bite.
Smith eventually came to the conclusion that it was bacteriologically impossible to inoculate against snake-bite, but while carrying out his investigations he collected a large amount of information about the relative virulence of the venom of Australian snakes.
This he treated as a business secret for many years, but a few months before his death he handed the formula to representatives of the New South Wales government.
Smith married Adelaide Elizabeth née Hoalls on 7 July 1877, the widow of Daniel Deniehy, who died in 1908.