ON CANCER 207 



The reason that the two lobes of the pituitary body 

 remain histologically separate while enclosed in a common 

 capsule, and constituting one excretory organism, is, that 

 they belong to different embryonic structural elements, 

 and owe their nourishment and innervation to different 

 sources, viz., neuro-systemic and neuro-sympathetic, or 

 the ecto-dermal and the hypo-dermal, because we see 

 throughout the body generally a well-marked distinctness 

 maintained, a fact alone due to distinctness of innervation 

 and sources of nutrition, and therefore dependent on 

 physiological "law and order." 



Mr. Bland Sutton, as reported in the Lancet of date 

 May 1 8th, 1907, gives a most informative and clear 

 exposition of the subject of cancer up to date, and 

 amongst many very interesting conclusions, he draws one, 

 with regard to the structural incidence of primary cancer 

 to the effect, that the systemic nerve tissue, voluntary 

 muscular substance, and fat cells, are the only tissues 

 unaffected secondarily, they of course come in for attack 

 and suffer in common. 



This conclusion appears singular and at first sight inex- 

 plicable, but, on considering it in the light of the dual 

 organisation of the nervous system, it seems to be 

 dependent on certain histological facts of pathogenic 

 relevancy and resolvent power to explain the problem. 

 Thus the structures named comprise those composing the 

 systemic nervous system, or the true systemic nerve 

 elements, and the only sympathetic structural element 

 devoid of a proper nuclear and nucleolar body within its 

 intra-cell substance ; hence in the former, or primary, the 

 formative impulse or materio-dynamic phenomena of 

 malignancy are initiated and administered by sympathetic 

 nerve agency, while in the latter, a stored substance, the 

 absence of a neuro-dynamic or formative nuclear agency 

 renders the fat cells non-responsive to the primary genetic 

 incitements to malignancy. 



From this point of view cancer would seem to be 

 determined primarily by a materio-dynamic disturbance 

 of the law of parallelism amongst the sympathetically 

 innervated tissue elements, whereby the metabolic and 

 formative energies of the affected cells take on strange or 



