7 8 PHYSIC 



receding and decaying nervine and other structures in the 

 line of its destructive progress, regardless of obstruction, 

 however resistant, until it reaches the dividing line, or 

 nervine "watershed," where its progress ends, or con- 

 tinues, into the central nerve centres, where it may 

 terminate in the death of its subject, or be reflected along 

 some neighbouring or histologically continuous nerve 

 structure on the same side, or, it may be, by symmetrical 

 extension on the opposite side, to continue its rodent 

 progress, and reduce the citadel of life to complete capitu- 

 lation by continued devastation of its vital defences. 

 Thus sometimes, after years, it may be, of molecular 

 "sapping" and "mining" or neurolytic activity, the 

 strongest and healthiest body inevitably crumbles, and 

 finally perishes, from the attacks of its own forces, de- 

 livered against its own defences with inexorable precision 

 and sustained determination ; an occurrence only com- 

 parable to that of lethal and fatal systemic autotoxis and 

 devitalisation, to be met with in certain conditions of 

 vitality and body hygiene. Applying this method of 

 etiological analysis to the explanation of the origin and 

 progress of cancer or malignant disease proper, we are 

 struck with its applicability and the manner in which it 

 can be made to clear up many of the obscure problems 

 involved in mastering its pathology and genesis ; thus, 

 whether cancer in any particular instance is to be regarded 

 as a disease of external or internal origin, of microbic 

 descent or dependent on the pre-existence of tumour germs, 

 we see it deliver its malignant attacks along lines often, 

 if not generally, marked out and differentiated by nerve 

 distribution, indicating that in such instances it has ob- 

 tained an entrance into the cerebro-spinal cavity, and 

 delivers its attacks along lines secured by nerve distribu- 

 tion on the areas and structures involved ; whence it 

 follows that the materies morbi may circulate along the 

 inter-neurilemmar spaces in the cerebro-spinal lymph, or 

 along the true nervine elements, the medullary or axis 

 cylinder substances, as a material virus, into the substance 

 of the involved tissues or organs, or that the cause of the 

 attack may be due to discharge of nervine energy on or 

 amongst the molecular elements of the affected tissues, 



