THEORIES AND PROBLEMS OF CANCER 683 



irregular masses ; the irregularities may occur among the 

 dividing cells of any tissue and unfortunately many writers 

 have applied the term " heterotype " to all of them as well as 

 to the meiotic or true reduction division which occurs normally 

 in the gametogenic cells. While some writers have deliberately 

 applied the term "heterotype" to any division which was unlike 

 the somatic form of division, others of less experience have 

 actually mistaken abnormal (pathological) cell divisions for the 

 true meiotic form and a great deal of confusion has arisen. 

 Thus Calkins says 1 : " The observations of Farmer, Moore and 

 Walker on heterotypical mitosis 2 in cancer cells indicate only 

 evidences of the degenerative changes which the majority of 

 cancer cells must undergo. . . . Cytologists, furthermore, are 

 constantly demonstrating that heterotypical mitosis is only a 

 condition which may be assumed by cells under abnormal treat- 

 ment. Haecker, for example, has shown that normal somatic 

 division figures are transformed into heterotypical mitoses by 

 treatment with ether and other poisons and Miss Bonnevie has 

 recently shown that heterotypical mitoses are common enough 

 in normally developing cells of various animals and plants." It 

 was known long before Haecker took up the subject that various 

 poisons produced irregular and deformed cell divisions 3 and, as 

 has been recently shown, 4 these are probably characteristic of 

 any inflammatory process. Inflammation, it must be realised, 

 follows upon any kind of injury or irritation. It may result 

 from a mechanical injury or irritant, from poisons or irritants 

 introduced as such among the cells, also from poisons or irritants 

 produced among or within the tissue cells by micro-organisms 

 which have gained access to them. A very slight departure 

 from the normal conditions is apparently sufficient to produce 

 abnormalities in the process of cell division. The complication 

 of the phenomena due to the cells of cancer having passed out 

 of somatic co-ordination by the addition of phenomena due to 

 inflammatory processes may very likely have led to confusion in 

 the case of some observations. 5 



The main evidence that meiotic phenomena occur in cancer 



1 Joum. Exper. Medicine, vol. x. No. 3, April 1908. 



2 The technical term for cell-division. 



3 Galeotti, Beitr. z.path. Ana/, u. z. Alleg. Path. Jena, xiv. s. 288, 1893, and 

 others. 



4 Walker and Whittingham, Joum. Path, and Bad. vol. xvi. 191 1. 



5 Walker and Whittingham, op. cit. 



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