THE CANCER CLAIM.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12647, 6 January 1904, Page 4

THE CANCER CLAIM.

Medical men in Great Britain who are giving up their time to the work of cancer research sound a note of warning in connection with the reported discovery of a new cancer treatment. A German doctor is reported to have isolated a specific parasite that causes cancer. He has sterilised it with liquid air, it is said, and also injected it into animals, developing in them a serum which had the power of destroying cancer cells. By injecting the first preparation, he found that in eight or ten hours the patient became feverish, and the cancerous growth became painful and inflamed. Both preparations tried on healthy people produced no result. According to the report, “There is no difficulty in finding parasites associated with cancer. Large numbers had already been discovered by the great leaders in cancer research. The difficulty was to decide which, if any, of them was the cause.”

An eminent authority on the work of cancer research said, in an interview with a “St. James’s Budget” representative, that the claims of the German doctor were known in England some months ago. The leaders of cancer research would only be too glad, he said, to learn that the cause of the disease which had so long baffled medical men had been'discovered. They wer§ willing at all times to give sympathetic consideration to every new theory advanced in the -hope that something useful might be developed thereby, but the public would do well not to accept too readily reported discoveries.

The claim is put forward by the German doctor that parasites . which had been described as different forms were one and the same parasite. The authority who was interviewed pointed out that it was probable that different observers were in some cases describing under different names the same form which has been called a parasite while, on the other hand, various observers might be claiming different appearances as distinct parasites. It had to be borne in mind, however, that it was not certain that what was described as a parasite was a parasite, and it was also a matter of doubt whether parasites were the cause of cancer. Therefore the German doctor’s claims could not possibly be held to be conclusive on any point, and in the opinion of those who had considered the matter the theory—if it could be called a theory—which had been advanced was improbable in the light of what was already known. There were, he said, scientific reasons against it.