CANCER RESEARCH

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7851, 13 July 1911, Page 5

CANCER RESEARCH

In '• Loudon ” for May Mr Hugh H. Riddle set out some of the facte that the Imperial Cancer Research Fund has ascertained in its laboratories in Savoy street since its work began in 1902. The investigators are conducting their researches on an army of mice. They say: “The cancers enj grafted in this mouse will fail to develop, and ho will throw off the disease, because we immunised him before the living cancer cells were implanted in his tissues. In artificially engrafted cancer, at any rate, the previous injection of normal mouse-blood or normal mouse-tissue—e.g., skin, spleen, etc.—into the mouse to bo inoculated has the result of rendering his tissues practically immune against cancer growth.” The investigators claim to have proved that the cancer problem is dissimilar in every way from any known germ-caused infectious disease. A cancerous tumour contains no virus or germ foreign to the normal living tissue. They have also proved that cancer is not contagious, that “ cancer houses ” are a myth. The disease is practically never passed on from one individual to another. The investigators have also laid the dread spectre of the alleged hereditary' character of the disease. The danger of a man inheriting a general constitution liable to the disease is infinitesimal. What are described as certain comforting statistics collected by tho investigators absolutely dispose of tho recent widespread belief that cancer is limited to civilised white men, and that increasing luxury loads directly to its development. There are over 30,000 victims a year in Japan ; in India, even including vegetarian oastes, all the evidence points ,to there being as much disease as hero. Numerous cases have been recorded amongst savage people. It is also shown that cancer is not on tiny _ increase. Evidence, said to be decisive, is laid to prove that chronic irritation of living tissues, such as by the rub- ■ bing or pressure of a foreign body, or by tho action of heat or of chemicals, plays an important part in cancer formation. So cancer is common in the abdominal skin of the natives of Cash-, more, who commonly carry oyer their stomachs a little oven containing burning charcoal. Experiments on mice have further shown that profound relief may he confidently hoped for if an operation is undertaken in time. All these conclusions, of course, rest on the assumption that what holds good of mice holds good of men.