478 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



parallelism of working, of function and structure generally 

 as well as specially. 



Thus regarded, cancer must be understood as a disease 

 of the transition state, or an affection which appears in struc- 

 tures, organs, or systems, whose textural and functional 

 states are liable to more or less sudden disturbances at 

 certain stages and phases of life, and when, in consequence^ 

 a non-parallelism, inequality, or disproportion, is apt to 

 ensue between the hitherto harmoniously dual working 

 of the physiological elements of structure and function. 

 Hence, it is met with, more particularly in late, middle, and 

 advanced periods of life, or when " in the nature of things " 

 the laying down, or abrogation of function, necessitates, 

 but is, unfortunately, not always immediately succeeded by, 

 the removal of the now morbid structure, and the adapta- 

 tion of the altering means to the altering ends the but, in 

 such cases, signifying the pathological "point of departure," 

 where disease is liable to take the place of health, and mark- 

 ing the commencement of ttiat shorter or longer down- 

 grade progress which characterises the " decline of life" 

 ere it merges into death, and final inorganic resolution. 



The decaying, and, therefore, somewhat septic materia^ 

 set free by the cancerous and other breaking down, and 

 pathological resolution of functionally inert tissue plasma, 

 invades by circulation the lumen of every vessel be it 

 blood, systemic lymph, or neurolymph and traverses 

 thereby, more or less, of the whole or related bodily 

 structures ; moreover, by histological continuity along the 

 purely fibrous and other quasi-solid elements of the 

 affected areas, it makes its way in a more circumscribed 

 and limited manner into the solid matrix of the neighbour- 

 ing structures and organs. 



These views of the genesis of cancer and tissue disease, 

 or malignant and innocent growths generally, would in- 

 dicate that the processes of physiological involution merge 

 insensibly into, and are continuous with, the processes 

 of pathological evolution ; or, in other words, that an 

 unbroken process of growth and extension characterises 

 the ending of the physiological structural regime in that 

 of the pathological, no absolute or sudden line of de- 

 marcation being distinguishable between them, the elements 



