206 PHYSIC 



logical process of cancer evolution. The factors can only 

 be two, viz. material and dynamic ; the age incidence, 

 the character of the tissues first involved, and their obedi- 

 ence and adaptability to the presiding formative and 

 nutritive impulses of the local nervatures, afford' a means 

 of departure from the physiological methods which have 

 hitherto prevailed, and an opportunity for the introduction 

 of pathological methods of dynamic arrangement of the 

 somewhat devitalised tissue elements and the ordinary 

 alimentary materials, which, together with the collabora- 

 tion of chemical and bacterial agencies "in wait" for an 

 opportunity to take in hand the work of involution which 

 at all times sooner or later has to be taken in hand by 

 such emissaries, and so the required malignant parasite 

 or influence is found and put in possession to perform the 

 work of spoliation by the production of those tissue 

 changes characterising the disease so long familiar to us 

 under the dreaded name of cancer. All which ought to 

 be preventable to the extent that every human being ought 

 to be in possession of the undisturbed power of reaching 

 the legitimate "length of his or her days" without sub- 

 jection to the danger of such occurrences. 



A proof or an evidence that muscular fibre is nourished 

 by or from nervine sources is that the nerve-plate endings 

 enter within the sarcolemmar sheaths and pass between 

 the sarcous discs filled with nerve substances and sur- 

 rounded by cerebro-spinal lymph, while the blood vascu- 

 lature is only spread out within the inter-musculo-fibral 

 spaces amid the interstitial substance and non-muscular 

 elements of the muscle substance, the one merging in 

 the proper muscular elements, while the other expends 

 itself in the maintenance of the non-muscular or inter- 

 stitial tissue. The blood circulation thus never reaches 

 the proper sarcous substances or contractile elements of 

 the voluntary musculature, leaving the systemic nervature 

 to effect the double function of materio-dynamic provider 

 and distributor, a view of the subjects involved which 

 brings into physiological line and order several at present 

 very obscure and somewhat contradictory problems bearing 

 on the subjects of nutrition and the etiology of certain 

 neuro-muscular diseases. 



