IS CANCER CATCHING?

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 142, 17 June 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

IS CANCER CATCHING?

RESULTS OP RECENT EXPERI-

MENTS

In the current number of the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which has just been issued, Dr. H. G. Plimmer, of St. Mary's Hospital, gives a preliminary account of some very important results he had obtained while studying the nature of, cancerous growths.

In this research, which has extended over six years, he has examined 1,278 cancers taken from various organs and parts of the human body.

Prom a comparatively small number of these he has succeeded in isolating parasitic organisms, less than a thousandth of an inch in diameter, which he believes 'stand in casual relationship to the disease.' These organisms, which occuir in a few cases in large numbers in the cancer-cells elaborated during the disease, appear to be extremely hardy and multiply under conditions which are fatal to the germs of most other infections. THEY CAN READILY BE CULTIVATED outside the human body by the methods usually adopted by bacteriologists in studying microscopic organisms. When the germs so obtained are introduced into certain animals they produce tumours and cause death, so that their casual connection with the disease is obvious.

From the fact that cancers which contain the germs dealt with are comparatively rare, the objection might be raised that the disease in these cases is not due to the same cause as ordinary cancers. But the exceptional acuteness of the disease under these conditions appears to show that there is no more difference between them and ordinary, cancers than between acute and chronic tuberculosis,

If cancer, like most other diseases, is caused by a microscopic organism, the fact that , in many cases, it undoubtedly

APPEARS TO BE INFECTIOUS,

would be explained

In this connection the results of an Italian scientist, Saufelice, are of importance. He has succeeded in producing tumours in animals with germs isolated from infusions of various fruits, and has also discovered parasitic organisms in many cases of cancer.

But the latter were either non-virul-ent or lost their virulence in a very short time, and in this respect differ from those dealt with by Dr. Plimmer, which retain their disease-pro-ducing power after being kept for several months;

The further development which Dr Plimmer promises of his investigations as to the nature of cancer will be awaited with interest.