ON CANCER 201 



by the active tissues and organs before it is " choked" and 

 turned into the channels prepared by or evolved from the 

 formative activities of the encroaching and overwhelming 

 disease. Cancer is thus primarily, like leprosy, a disease 

 of arrested egestion, i.e. arising through delayed removal 

 of functionless organic substances, which, from imperfect 

 organic hygiene, are allowed to cumber the body, thereby 

 becoming a prey to bacterial and other morbid agents, as 

 well as, it may be, forming a material basis for the destruc- 

 tive display of chemico-pathological energy, or allowing 

 the devitalising influences natural to all organic matter, 

 whether active or passive, vitally incorporated or physically 

 attached, to exercise their disintegrating powers. 



In contrast to leprosy, however and herein lies the 

 great difference in etiological evolution between the two 

 affections cancer primarily manifests itself or begins its 

 morbid work in structures belonging to or innervated by 

 the sympathetic nervous system, and if it does synchron- 

 ously involve the systemic nervous system and systemically 

 innervated structures, it does so by progression along 

 anatomical and histological lines, determined by mutual 

 continuity and contiguity, therefore, we usually find by 

 carefully directed enquiry into individual cases, that the 

 first symptoms of the disease have manifested themselves 

 in such organs as the mammae, the uterus, and any particular 

 organs or structures whose functions have been from any 

 cause ceasing to be exercised on their accustomed scale, 

 and whose idle machinery or asthenic and adynamic 

 material parts, are being left for removal by hygienic 

 phagocytes and other scavengers, or for morbid utilisation 

 by any microbic or other wandering disease agencies which 

 have gained access to the scene of dismantlement and 

 textural disintegration, and are permitted to begin the 

 work of disease production the same deduction applies 

 to traumatised textures. 



It follows from this, therefore, that cancer evolves itself, 

 or is evolved, from health, that the physiological state of 

 the affected structures suffering from stasis of katabolic 

 material gradually gives place to the pathological, and that 

 there is no absolutely true dividing line, or "line of 

 demarcation," between them, a conclusion which may 



