272 THE PROTEAL TREATMENT OF CANCER 



ence of the products of excessive destruction in the urine. The 

 next step in the pathology will be the reversion of the cell- forming 

 organs to a more primitive type as a result of the continued strain 

 on them. This also we find in lymphsemia as we do in Addisonian 

 anaemia. Here, however, the analogy ends for the reversion in 

 the case of lymphsemia may proceed in the extent of resurrecting 

 tissues whose cell-forming days were over." 



Elsewhere in the same chapter, the salient aspect of the sub- 

 ject is elaborated as follows : 



"In the group of diseases now to be discussed the common and 

 distinctive feature is involvement of all the blood-forming or- 

 gans by a growth or overgrowth that is similar in each organ. 



"In the first sub-group, the leukaemias, not only the adult blood- 

 forming organs, marrow, spleen, and lymph glands are effected 

 but in other situations tumors may appear which are composed 

 of tissue identical with that in the marrow, etc. These tissues 

 are the embryonic and infantile blood-forming organs, the liver 

 and thymus, .and, secondly, connective tissue wherever met with. 

 This extraordinarily wide distribution of lesions in some cases is 

 the more readily explained when we remember that all mesoblastic 

 tissue is potentially Wood-forming i.e., blood-cell-forming just 

 as it is potentially sarcomatous or fibromatous." 



To understand the subsequent sequence of events, we have to 

 recall that overstimulation of any organ leads presently to ex- 

 haustion. So the same stimulus that at first produces an excess 

 of blood corpuscles may presently result in marked decrease. Note, 

 for example, what Pappenheim says as to this: 



"Leucopenia is not diametrically opposed to hyperleucocytosis 

 even when it appears from the first as a leucopenia, e.g., in typhoid. 

 It ought rather to be regarded as differing in degree only, since 

 high degrees of leucocytosis, or leucocytosis of long standing, may 

 merge into leucopenia. When this occurs, especially if accom- 

 panied by the presence of early forms [leucoblasts, myelocytes, 

 normoblasts] in the blood, it indicates commencing exhaustion of 

 the overtaxed bone marrow." 



Such are the recognized effects of a persistent stimulation of 

 the organs of blood regeneration by the products of blood de- 

 struction. It must be obvious, then, that in every far-advanced 

 case of cancer, or at any rate in every case in which a neoplasm 

 has assumed considerable proportions, there must be a greater or 

 less degree of what Ward refers to as "hyperprophy of the lym- 

 phocyte-forming tissues," including spleen and marrow. Ac- 

 cording to the present thesis, the increased formation of lympho- 

 cytes and early myelogenous forms in response to the stimulus of 

 the cancer cells is a salutary process, an attempt on the part of 

 the organism at spontaneous cure of the malady. But the net 

 result, when the new growth is too active, is that ultimately the 

 organs of blood- formation have reached their maximum response 



