254: ALLEGED MICKOBIC OEIGIN OF TUMOKS. 



exception the graft was found absorbed and its place occupied by a 

 subcutaneous cicatrix. At least twenty- four such experiments were 

 made with the same uniform negative results. The comparative 

 rarity of malignant tumors in animals made it difficult for me to 

 carry out the plan of inoculating from animal to animal. I finally 

 came in possession of a dog which had a sarcoma of the lower jaw. 

 Implantation experiments were made on the same animal and a 

 number of other dogs, but in all of them the grafts were absorbed 

 as promptly as when tumor tissue from the human subject was 

 used. I finally decided on making an implantation experiment on 

 man in the first case in which such an experiment would be justi- 

 fiable from the hopelessness of the case. The case that I selected 

 was a large carcinoma of the leg which had taken its origin from 

 the skin and in which amputation was objected to. The fungous 

 surface was scraped and cauterized and from the deepest portion of 

 the growth a piece of tissue, the size of a peach-stone, was inserted 

 through a small incision into the connective tissue over the poste- 

 rior aspect of the leg and the wound sutured with fine catgut. 

 Primary union took place, with circumscribed infiltration of tissue 

 around the graft from the second day to the end of the first week, 

 After this time gradual disappearance of the graft by absorption 

 occurred, until, at the end of four weeks, it had entirely disappeared. 

 At the meeting of the German Congress of Surgeons in 1889, Wehr 

 ("Weitere Mittheilungen iiber diepositiven Ergebuisseder Carcinom- 

 ueberimpfungeu von Huud auf Hund") admitted that in the animals 

 which he showed at the previous meeting the nodules had since be- 

 come smaller and smaller and finally disappeared completely ; but 

 he made the statement that since that time he had not only been 

 able to inoculate a dog successfully by implantation of carcinomatous 

 tissue, but that, in one instance at least, the animal died of carci- 

 noma. His transplantations were made from animal to animal. 

 He infected twenty-six dogs, using tissue from five bitches affected 

 with vaginal carcinoma and two dogs suffering from carcinoma of 

 the penis. Under strict antiseptic precautions a small incision was 

 made in the skin, and then a trocar was inserted to the depth of 

 three or four cm., and through the canula the fragment of cancer 

 tissue was deeply embedded. Six of the animals had to be killed 

 three and four weeks after the inoculation, because they had been 

 bitten by a dog which was supposed to have hydrophobia. In the 

 remaining animals he obtained twenty-four nodules, five of which 

 were examined at a time when possibly they might have continued 

 to increase in size, while the remaining nodules were all absorbed. 

 In a bitch which was inoculated December 12, 1887, in four places 

 in the region of the mammary gland, the nodules increased in size 

 until they were as large as a plum or hazelnut. In April of the 



