CANCER AND ITS ORIGIN

Otago Witness, Issue 2603, 3 February 1904, Page 13

CANCER AND ITS ORIGIN

£HE BRADSHAW LECTURE BY MR

HENRY MORRIS, F.RC.S,

(Daily Times, January 27.)

jWe published on 23rd inst. a letter from cur London correspondent in which he gave come particulars, epitomised from a oon"deaised. report in the London Daily Tele-g-arph, of the Bradshaw lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on December 9 by Mr Henry Morris, M.A., F.R.C.S., ,w ho chose for his subject "Cancer and its Origin. ' We give below a letter we have received from Dr MAdam criticising our correspondent's opinions on the utterances vL leCturiSr and re P° rt on which they are based. Curiously enough, as cur London correspondent points out in a further communication, the Daily Telegraph has made no explanation of the inaccuracy of its report, but subsequently an explanation appeared in the St. James's Gazette in reply to a correspondent of that paper who had written on the subject. Thio explanation will be found in our yesterday's issue. I>r M7Adam writes to us as follows : —

CANCER AND THE LAY PRESS. TO THE EDITOB.

Sib,— l hava to direct attention to a very grave inaccuracy — if I may use so mild a term — ■which appears in your issue for January 23. It occurs in the course of an article, sent by your own correspondent in London, headed " Cancer ; Some Fresh Lights ; Astounding Admissions " ; which purports to be a summary, with comments, of the BradsJiaw lecture on "' Cancer and its Origin," delivered by Henry Morris, MA.., F.E.C.S. The lecturer is reported as stating : " The communication of cancer by means of grafting and inoculation, from one patient to another .... had been for many years the subject of experiment. Innumerable attempts to convey the disease from one patient to another had failed, although the experiments had been successful in the case of white mice." 'A long paragraph follows wherein y<mr correspondent deals with the " monstrous and wicked atrocity" of such proceedings, and holds up Mr Morris and the profession to scorn, and, in fact, accusing them of murder!

Would it not, Sir, have been reasonable if your contributor, or yourself, had read the report of the address before you published sudh nonsense? In the British Medical Journal for December 12, 1903, will be found the speech published in full, and it will be seen on careful perusal that there is not one word to support your contributor's charges, which have evidently been made through ignorance. Where lie has erred is in mistaking the reports of alleged cases of accidental contagion — e.g., by kissing— for experimental inoculation by surgeon or viviseciionist. There is not one case of the latter kind reported anywhere throughout the speech. ~I trust you will publish some ■refutation of the libel, in the interests of the uneducated especially, as they have far too many ridiculous fancies regarding hospital management already. — I am, etc., K. MAdam, M.B.

Oamaru, January 23, 1904.

The error of the Daily Telegraph is one that a Jay journal might be pardoned for falling into, and it was only when the St. James's Gazette volunteered its explanation that Mr Morris's real meaning was made plain. "Wo give the. full text of his remarks on the particular point in question as they appear in the British Medical Journal of December 12, 1803. Mr Morris said, speaking of tL<> transmission of cancer by grafting and direct inoculation : " Some of the results of grafting amd direct inoculation have often been evoked in support of the miorobio theoriea of cancer genesis, though upon very inadequate grounds. For more than a century experiments have been reported n with the object of testing — (l x Whether oancer can bs transmitted from man to animals, or from one animal to another of a different spec-ie-s ; (2) whether cancer is communicable from man to man, or from one animal to another cf the same epcoies ; (3) whether one part of a cancerous individual can be inoculated from another part whloh itself is the coat of cancer." In summing up the results of these experiments Mr Morris said: "Reference may be mad© to Cazin for the earlier, and to Kehla's lecture on ' Cancer a deux,' de'liyered before the Berlin Cancer Committee, April 3, 1901, for the most recent information on the second of these questions. Macewen, in his speech at the Glassrow debate, and De Bovis, in a recent article, have also quoted several casss of the alleged communication of Carcinoma f'om man to man; and my friend and former boi.se- surgeon, Mr Nash, of B-edford, Las collected five case 3of supposed oommunieatioii of cancer of the tongue and lip from man to man. Maran'e observations Bi.cm to prove that cancer was communicated from mice to mice by means ot bugs." Many of the cases in man, he added, were instances of what is called " conjugal canc&r," and in these he considered " the can-er-r formation was excited by chronic or icpeated irritation, rather than communicated by the transmission from one pcroon to the other of the carcinoma ce4ls. Several instances of auto-inoculation were quoted by th.3 speakers in the London and Glasgow debates. Halm succeeded in grafting carcinoma and Cornil sarcoma from one part of a human being with incurable disease to enoiher part of the same patient's body-" peliberit^ experimento en the human subject cannot bo too strongly condemned, srd the British Medical Journal does go in no uncertain terms. We iiavo also received from Dr Church tLe following letter bearing on the subject: — THE CANCER PROBLEM. TO THE EDITOR. Sib, — There is a somewhat startling communication, published in to-day's Times, fiom your London correspondent, re the cancer problem. He says " the matter is of deep interest to New Zealand, where, as here, cancer is so deplorably prevalent." It appears that certain writers in some of the London papers have been amazed and horror-str ; cken at a statement the great surgeon Henry Moms is reportsd to have made in a lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, and these writers ask if it is true or possible that " such an atrocity " can rea-lly be practised m our hospitals. In the last number to hand of the British Medical Journal the editor answers these hysterical questions thus: — "We have often felt it our duty to protest against the publication of the absurd travesties of medical facts, theories, and opinions which so frequently appear in certain newspapers. Such irresponsible statements do harm either by exciting false hopes in the breasts of sufferers or by misleading ignorant readers as to the aims of rational medicine, and the methods of scientific research. A particularly serious example of the latter form of mischief has occurred _m connection with MiHenry Morris's Bradshaw lectura ' On Cancer end its Origin,' which was published in the

last issue of the British Medical Journal. In the Daily Telegiaph and one or two other newspapers Mr Morris was reported to have made the following statement : ' The communication of cancer, by means of grafting an inoculation from one patient to another, or from one animal to another, had fox many years been the subject of experiment. Innumerable attempts to convey the disease from one patient to a second had failed, although the experiments had proved successful in the case of white mice.' Anyone who will take the trouble to compare this passage with the text of the lecture will see that it completely misrepresents the distinguished surgeon's meaning. In speaking of experiments and observations on the transmis3ibility of cancer fiom man to man, Mr Morris of course referred only to accidental inoculations. This is clearly shown by the following paragraphs, in which oases of cancer a deux, reported by Behla, Macewan, and de Bovis are mentioned. There are on record many instances of the alleged transmission of cancer from husband to wife or vice versa, from patient to nurse, and from one member of a family to another. The hands have usually been described a,s the medium conveying the disease, except in cases of ' conjugal ' origin. But dirty linen, vessels and utensils used in eating and drinking, water and vegetables, ex hypothesi germ contaminated, have also been said to play a part in the transmission of oancer from man to man. The only instances of the deliberate grafting or inoculation of cancer from man to man known are to be found in the experiments of Alibert at the end of the eighteenth century. The famous dermatologist inoculated himself, his pupil and friend Biett, and three other medical brethren, who were consenting parties to the experiment, with cancer, and the result in every case was negative. The only cases of deliberate inoculation of cancer from one part of the patient's body to another that we know cf are those recorded by Habn, an unnamed surgeon, 'referred to by Cornil, at a meeting of the French Academy, yon Bergmann, and Lenn of Chicago. 'In all these cases, with the possible 'Sxoeption of that referred to by Cornil, it is certain that the experiment was made with the patient's consent. It must bs remembered, too, that in all cases the patient was suffering from inoperable cancer."

I might just add that in the case alluded to by Cornil, the editor, speaking for the medical profession, said: "We cannot reprehend too strongly such an abominable^iction as has been perpretrated in these cases, and we are glad to observe that the experiment was strongly condemned by the Academy of Medicine."

The importance of this matter is my apology for taking up so much of your valuable space. — I am, etc.,

Robert Church, 57 High street. January 26, 1904.