6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



interpreted, nor how the disease had been transmitted, and they 

 had been received with scepticism apparently justified by repeated 

 failures to transmit human cancer to animals. The recollection 

 of them was born of the despairing hope that, perhaps, after 

 all, statements relating to cancer in animals had been unduly 

 neglected. It had been asserted frequently that the disease was 

 peculiar to man, even to civilised man, that it was rare in other 

 races of mankind, and in the domesticated animals with whom 

 he came in contact, but altogether absent in aboriginal races and 

 in wild animals. It is only fair to add in passing that veteri- 

 narians had described all the main types of cancer in the 

 domesticated mammals. 



At the time of the foundation of the Imperial Cancer Research 

 Fund the position was briefly as follows : The gradual ex- 

 haustion of the methods in vogue had led to a cessation in the 

 advancement of knowledge on the nature of malignant new 

 growths. The bedside observation of cases in the human 

 subject, combined with anatomical, microscopical, and chemical 

 examinations in laboratories attached to hospitals, had advanced 

 to a stage where they seemed to raise more difficulties than they 

 solved. As in the corresponding stages of previous attempts to 

 solve other anatomical and physiological problems, the number 

 of contradictory speculations current was legion. They were 

 based on the same observed facts, which were being added to 

 continually by other facts of the same kind — i.e. there was vain 

 repetition. The exact knowledge of the disease was strangely 

 restricted to its occurrence in the more civilised races of man, 

 while the explanations of the observed facts roamed over the full 

 field of medical and biological knowledge, and speculation. This 

 discrepancy required adjusting. The impossibility of directing 

 speculation into proper channels, or even of determining what 

 those channels might be, by other methods, caused the need for 

 comparative studies and for experiment to be acutely felt. 



The first organised attempt to broaden the basis of the 

 knowledge of cancer, and of its experimental study, was made 

 when the investigations of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund 1 



1 A " Society for Investigating the Nature of Cancer" was formed at John 

 Hunter's instigation in 1804. The German Cancer Committee was founded in 

 1900 ; its work was, however, directed to applying statistical methods to prove the 

 infective nature of cancer. The New York State Cancer Laboratory at Buffalo 

 was in working order in 1899, the work has been almost entirely experimental ; 

 but mainly directed to search for evidence in favour of infection. 



