ALLEGED MICROBIC ORIGIN OF TUMORS. 255 



following year the tissues around the tumors became the seat of 

 inflammation, which, however, soon subsided. The tumors in- 

 creased in size, and the following June the animal lost flesh rapidly 

 and died the middle of the same mouth. The autopsy showed 

 metastatic tumors in the pelvis and along the lumbar portion of 

 the spine. The tumor in the pelvis had compresed the urethra so 

 firmly that the bladder ruptured an accident which was the direct 

 cause of death. Two carcinomatous nodules were also found in the 

 chest. Makra has been making a series of bacteriological studies 

 on malignant tumors in the laboratory of Kovacs, but, so far, only 

 negative evidence has been obtained. 



Galippe and Landouzy (" Note sur la presence de parasites : 1, 

 dans les tumeurs fibreuses (myomes) uterines ; 2, dans le liquide 

 des kystes ovariens et sur leur role pathogenique probable," Graz. 

 des Hop., 1887, No. 24) have extended the bacteriological investi- 

 gations of the microbic origin of tumors to the benign variety. In 

 two cases of extirpation of myomatous tumors of the uterus they 

 inoculated a nutrient medium with the tumor tissue, and three days 

 later found numerous microorganisms ; the most conspicuous was 

 a diplococcus arranged in groups, or in long chains ; also strepto- 

 cocci and bacilli. The same microbes were found in both tumors. 

 The same authors also found microorganisms in the contents of two 

 ovarian cysts. They believe that solid and cystic tumors develop 

 in consequence of the entrance of microbes into the organism in the 

 same manner as parasites cause excrescences in plants. 



In 1888 Neisser ( Vierteljahrsschr if tfiirl)ermatologieund Syphilis, 

 1888) published an elaborate paper on the microbic origin of tumors 

 containing the results of his own observations, in which he places 

 the parasite in the coccidia groups of the sporozoa. 



The following year Darier (Archiv de Med. Experimental^ et 

 d* Anatomic Pathologique, March 1, 1890) made two reports of the 

 result of his work in Malassez's laboratory. In the first of these 

 he intimated the recognition of a coccidium in a case of acne eornee, 

 and defines the condition as a psorospermose cutanee ; in the second 

 he announced that he had found a parasite belonging to the same 

 class in a case of Paget's disease of the nipple. He claims that this 

 parasite presents all the different morphological phases of develop- 

 ment characteristic of this organism ; at first a naked mass of pro- 

 toplasm, afterward surrounded by an envelope, then the protoplasm 

 dividing into numerous granules, which being surrounded by the 

 cell-membrane, presents the appearance of a cyst. He regards the 

 disease in which these formations are formed as parasitic, a psoro-* 

 spermose. The same year Albarran ( La Scmaine Medicale, 1889, 

 p. 101) informed the society that he had found a similar parasite in 

 two epithelial tumors of the jaw. 



