472 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



condition of things, therefore, we have a nidus in which 

 spontaneous retrogressive changes are continually in 

 progress, and what more natural, therefore, than that 

 these changes should be pathologically hastened by one or 

 many of those parasitic or bacterial tenants, which, from 

 time to time, or, it may be, always, are in possession of 

 the living body for good or ill, and whose eviction, when 

 evil, it becomes the great necessity of well-directed prophy- 

 laxis and therapeutics to obtain in the first place, and 

 surgical measures in the second ? The materies morbi of 

 cancer, whatever it may be, is a morbid agent or tendency, 

 or both, which can only become actively harmful when the 

 individual organism has entered on " the down grade," 

 and when its metamorphosing tissues have, consequently, 

 lost that vitality which alone is able to confer and maintain 

 their immunity from, or under, attack ; it must thus be 

 necessary, in order to meet such conditions, that the 

 greatest heed should be taken in order to anticipate and 

 forestall the attack of the materies morbi by the maintenance 

 of as robust a physical condition as can be obtained, and 

 the withdrawal of all vulnerable metamorphic matter as far 

 as that can be accomplished. So, we think, it will be 

 possible, to some extent, to meet that clamant cry and 

 want of the present time by a rational and, to a certain 

 extent, scientific adaptation of <c means to ends." Those, 

 therefore, who are approaching the period of decline of 

 life must be taught the physiological necessity of main- 

 taining the condition of the general health at its highest 

 standard in order to promote the " work of nature " 

 employed in adapting the various structures and organs 

 of the body to altering structural and functional conditions 

 in obedience to the laws governing the incidence and 

 progress of involutionary metamorphosis, and so to raise 

 the barriers of physiological textural resistance and conse- 

 quent immunity from the pathological attack of cancerous 

 and other disease emissaries and enemies. 



