380 Kansas Academy of Science. 



present time as to the pathology and history of cancer. By labora- 

 tory experimentation it has been demonstrated that cancer may be 

 endemic in animals. Desiring to ascertain facts along this line, 

 Hanan, Burrell, Michales, Loeb and many others entered the field 

 of investigation. The results of their experiments were of such a 

 nature as to prove beyond a doubt that the disease was endemic in 

 character, and infectious. Animals were kept in cages and their 

 diet controlled, as this gave the observers a far better opportunity 

 to perfect the observations as to the infectiousness of cancer, and 

 the results were of greater significance. 



Pick, of Germany, discovered the endemic occurrence of cancer 

 of the thyroid in brook-trout hatcheries. Bennett reports the same 

 condition, it having occurred in the Tarbole hatchery on the Gar- 

 dasee. In the Tarbole hatchery there was a destruction of 3000 

 trout from cancer of the thyroid. Pick farther states that when 

 the fish were infected the disease was confined to indivdual tanks 

 or pools. If fish free from infection were placed in these pools or 

 tanks they soon acquired the disease. Heredity could not be con- 

 sidered as a factor, but that the disease was endemic and that the 

 water of these pools or tanks must have contained the agent which 

 produced the disease. 



In 1901 Loeb carried forward a series of experiments with rats, 

 desiring to prove the endemic nature of cancer, and the results pro- 

 duced, to his mind, were conclusive, viz., that the disease was en- 

 demic. After the completion of his experiments, the cages were 

 sterilized, except two, and again filled with healthy rats secured 

 from another part of the country. In due time the rats that had 

 been placed in the unsterilized cages showed positive evidence of 

 cystic sarcoma of the thyroid. The sterilized cages showed no 

 evidence whatever of unhealthy rats. These experiments were car- 

 ried on some six or more times, producing the same result. Doctor 

 Loeb demonstrated sections of the primary and inoculation tumors 

 at various times before scientific societies, and the consensus of 

 opinion by all pathologists present was that the samples were true 

 spindle-celled sarcoma. We must therefore consider these tumors 

 as malignant. 



From a scientific standpoint we could produce for your consid- 

 eration a very large number of cases that would prove beyond 

 question the theory of communicability and endemic nature of 

 cancer. 



I am looking forward to the time when we can and will have 

 overcome what seems at the present moment to be an unsurmountable 



