CANCER RESEARCH

Evening Star, Issue 19774, 26 January 1928, Page 4

CANCER RESEARCH

QUARTER OF A CENTURY OF WORK The twenty-fifth annual report (192627) of the Imperial cancer research fund has just been issued. It carries on the story of patient investigation which for a quarter of a century has been in progress at Queen square. Unhappily there is as yet no indication that the goal of the work is in sight. Dr Murray, the director of the fund, deals at some length with the disputed question whether or not cancer is a solitary invader of the body—that is to say", whether or not two or more cancers can begin together and co-exist as do, for example, warts. Dr Murray believes that the evidence he has obtained justifies him in accepting the “solitary ” view. This is a matter of some importance because, if it be true that a second cancer cannot easily grow in a body in which a cancer is already established, then presumptive evidence exists that the body does make an attempt to rid itself of cancer, and hope is engendered of being able some day to make use of this natural healing power. Dr Murray offers some observations on work which, he thinks,-tends to confirm the researches of Dr Gye. On the other hand, as there is reason to think, work conducted in another research centre in London has not tended to confirm these researches, but rather to negative them, ft is evident that no final views about Gye’s work can, even yet, be formulated. An interesting feature of the report is the account given of the views of Professor Marburg, of Berlin, about the nature of the cancer process.