THE ORIGIN OF CANCER.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11166, 29 January 1904, Page 5

THE ORIGIN OF CANCER.

The London Times, in commenting on a lecture on the origin of cancer, delivered before the Royal College' of Surgeons by Mr Henry Morris, says it appears to justify the hope- that the work of the Research Fund is being prosecuted in directions likely to lead to eventual success. It is very helpful to be able to 'clear the ground of encunibering conjectures and hypotheses; and Mr Morris gives -it to be plainly understood that any reference of cancer to an "extrinsic" cause — that is to say, to any such agency as a bacterium, a parasite, or a fungus — must now be definitely excluded. Agencies of this kind have been diligently sought for during many years, -and discoveries in this direction have been claimed by many' observers; but in no instance has the claim been established by more extended investigation, and the possibilities, of research in this direction appear to have ;been fairly 'exhausted, ' and to hav.e been exhausted with a negative result. It has become necessary, provisionally at least, to rgar3 cancer as an outgrowth -from the body in which it arises, and -to seek first for the germs in 'which it may. have its origin, and secondly for the ■ conditions which aronse -these germs into activity. The hypothesis of Thiersch, to the effect that cancer depended upon some disturbance'of balance in the nutritive forces of a- healthy part, a disturbance' by reason of which nutritive material was locally misapplied, so to speak, to the production of an adventitious and quasi-parasitic material, was found, ott investigation, to be insufficient to explain facts" that were familiar to surgeons; and it gradually gave place to that of Cohnheim, modified to meet conditions in which cancer, instead of appearing in natural tissues, was first observed in cicatrices, or in the material effused for the repair of, fractured bone. Cohnheim suggested that the x body must be regarded as containing here and there among its tissues- scattered nuclei of embryonic ,germ cells .'which for some reason had failed to undergo their natural development, and that these germ cells were liable, under certain conditions of irrita-* tion and in loweifed vitality of immediate environment, to spring from dormancy into, activity, and. to become the foundations of inordinate and unnatural growth. It was found that the localities in , which,., in the. natural course of embryonic development, such germs would be most likely to remain were also the favourite localities of cancer; and^he additional suggestion, that the germs -might be displaced into and entangled . among gear/tissue .in the course pf ; healing, ' afforded a possible explanation of the origin of cancer in the seats of accidental injury, or -in the cicatrices .of wounds.