CANCER RESEARCH.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 15, 30 December 1911, Page 7

CANCER RESEARCH.

LECTURE BY SIR HENRY BUTLIN. THE LATEST VIEWS. In a recent lecture on “The Parasite of Cancer,” delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons, Sir Henry Butlin said that six years ago he summed np the evidence , in favour of the only two views which could reasonably he put forward—entrance from without or formation within the body; and ho came reluctantly to the cornelusion that the evidence of “formation within” was stronger than the evidence in favour of “entrance from without.” He said reluctantly because it led to the logical conclusion that new species of living creatures are created from a source and in a manner which has never hitherto been imagined. Nevertheless, during the last six years the evidence in favour of “formation within” the body has grown steadily stronger, while nothing has been added to the evidence in favour of “entrance from without.” He enumerated the points of each piece of evidence as follows: —The reseihblanco of the cancer cells to those of the natural tissues in which the

cancer appears to start; the resemblance of the secretion of the cancer cells to the secretion of the natural cells; tiie resemblance of the degenerations of the cells to those of the normal cells; the resemblance of the grouping of the cells to the grouping of the natural cells;, and the resemblance of the phenomena of reproduction in the cancer cells to those of the natural cells which they resemble. All these may be regarded as traits of atavism, and it is upon these that the explanation of -some of the phenomena of cancer rests. Students of cancer,' research workers, biologists who have studied cancer, are all practically agreed that the cancer cell is derived from the cells of the part in which it takes its origin, or appears to take its origin, and -they are bent on finding an > explanation rof the reasons which lead/the cancer I cell to behave so differently from the cells from which it is derived. ,-.i id. CONCLUSIONS. Twenty years ago continued the lecturer, it was not in the minds of pathologists that cancer should get well, to-day, however everybody knows that it docs get well both in animals and human beings, and many of us are prepared to believe that it gets well much more commonly than we know of at present, Ho,was of opinion that there is one, ancUonly one, explanation of the conduct’of the caiibef'cell—-that it has been endowed with that wondrous gift which pb man has seen and which no man ' can understand—the gift of life, and that owing to that gift, it has become an independent creature, a new creation of living \bing. The host in which .it dwells lias fashioned it out of his own tissues and in the likeness of his tissues and, to borrow the figurative language of Scripture, the Creator has breathed into it the breath of life—and it becomes a veritable Frankenstein’s monster, bent on the destruction of its host. After ages of past and present civilisation, during which searchers and philosophers have sought to explain the origin and nature of life, we have come no further than this, and he who discovers the true origin of cancer will have solved the enigma which has hitherto baffled the searchers and philosophers in all ages an; of all countries.