CHAPTER IV 



SYNCYTIOMA MALIGNUM : ITS BEAKING UPON THE ESSENTIAL 



NATURE OF MALIGNANCY 1 



(1902) 



Asked most courteously to contribute from a distance some- 

 thing to the debate upon the nature of cancer, and recognizing 

 the difficulties under which both my audience and myself must 

 labour when I accept, it has seemed to me better not to attempt 

 an academic essay covering the whole territory of the possible or 

 presumed relationship of parasites to malignant growths, but to 

 consider more in detail one small portion of the vast field before 

 us, in the hope that this will not already have been traversed by 

 other participators in the debate : in the hope, further, that the 

 deductions which may logically be drawn from the study of a 

 single form of tumour may throw light upon the essential nature 

 of tumours in general. And in advance let me say that I am 

 well acquainted with the ancient Greek parable of a certain 

 man who, having a house to sell, circumambulated the city 

 bearing in his hand a brick as sample. I trust that when my few 

 words have been delivered the brick will not be thrown in my face. 

 Until recently we have been in the dark as to the relationship 

 between the embryo and the maternal tissues in the womb ; 

 now certain important points are well established. The observa- 

 tions of H. Peters, of Vienna, upon the earliest human ovum 

 which has thus far been discovered in utero — an ovum of about 

 the end of the first week — have proved in a manner admitting 

 of no dispute (when compared with what we know concerning 

 mammalian ova in general) that even at this early date the cells 



1 A contribution to a discussion, held by the Chelsea Clinical Society, upon 

 Cancer. Reprinted from the Clinical Journal, June 18, 1902. 



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