December 31, 190HJ 



NA TURE 



26. 



The available hcliometcr measures indicate a fluctua- 

 lion of the sun's shape corresponding with the ii-3-ycar 

 sun-spot period, but probably not exceeding o"-io, whilst 

 the observations of Anibronn and Schur possibly indicate 

 another, shorter, period, of about twenty-eight days. 



To determine this question, a long, homogeneous series 

 of observations is necessary, and a photographic heliometcr 

 would probably furnish the best results. Experiments in 

 this direction have already been made. 

 >. .\ Remarkahi.e Meteor. — In Xo. 4287 of the A$irono- 

 mische Nacbrichten Prof. Kopff describes a remarkable 

 meteor which left a persistent, drifting train for about 

 lialf an hour. The meteor was first seen at i2h. ssm. 

 (.M.T. Konigstuhl) at Heidelberg, and was brighter than 

 Venus, its colour being a yellowish white. It appeared 

 about 2° east of a Urs;c Majoris, and travelled along a 

 path parallel to the line joining a and y Ursa'. The 

 luminous trail changed its shape and position, and was 

 lin.dly observed at ijh. 25m. 



Sun-spots in 1907. — The frequency and heliographic dis- 

 tribution of sun-spots in 1907 are discussed by Dr. Rudolf 

 Wolf in No. 99 of the Astronomische Mitteilimgcn. The 

 monthly relative numbers show maxima in February and 

 Srpicmber, the dailv relative number between February 

 <i-i4 exceeding 170; for the year the mean monthly number 

 was 62-0. .Some interesting tables and curves show the 

 relations between the variations in sun-spot numbers and 

 terrestrial magnetism. 



TiTE P.iRAi.L.w OF (II CvGNi. — The rcsults of a new 

 determination of the parallax of 6x Cygni, carried out by 

 Prof. G. .Abetti at Heidelberg iqo6-8. are published in 

 No. 9, vol. xx.wii., of the Meinoric della Societa degli 

 Spcltroscopisti Italiani. .About 7000 observations were 

 made, and their reduction, in three series, gives the 

 following figures for the parallaxes of the components* of 

 ihe star: — 61 Cygni pr. 7r=-l-o".24, mean error, +o"o5; 

 (>i Cygni f. 7r=-(-o".22, mean error, ±o"o5. 



ADVANCE IN KNOWLEDGE OF CANCER. 

 T N conformity with a scheme of inquiry embarked upon 

 ■'■ in October, 1902, the third scientific report of the 

 Imperial Cancer Research Fund, recently issued, treats, 

 like its predecessors, of cancer as a problem of general 

 and experimental biology. It contains no definite answer 

 to the questions. What is the nature and what the cause 

 of cancer? and beyond demonstrating that systematic 

 experiment justifies the early surgical removal of a tumour 

 as the only possible treatment at the present time, the 

 report is silent as to remedial and preventive measures. 

 These shortcomings will almost certainly arouse misgivings 

 on the part of those who cannot appreciate how progress 

 is made in any field of knowledge. They will also, no 

 doubt, be seized upon by persons who, in their ignor- 

 ance, assert that all scientific efforts should be con- 

 centrated on utilitarian ends, and they will be exploited 

 l)y the charlatan, to whom for a space a free field is 

 still left for his nostrums. The sustained efforts of the 

 past six years to penetrate the mysteries of cancer 

 h,ave been accompanied by a coi'responding activity 

 on the part of faddists and quacks who advertise them- 

 selves by proclaiming the failure of scientific investiga- 

 tion to yield " practical fruits." The danger of their 

 literary activity is but enhanced by the powers of diction 

 and of exposition possessed by some of the writers. They 

 could profitably devote their literary ability to expound- 

 ing to the public the true facts and difticulties of the 

 cancer problem instead of the ridiculous causes they 

 maintain before a jury of the credulous and the suffer- 

 ing. In the absence of this enlightened attitude on their 

 part it is my duty, since the second scientific report 

 was followed by volumes of nonsense on the part of such 

 persons, bluntly to inform the general reader of the folly 

 of ignoring the necessity for the early surgical removal 

 of cancer, and of running from one faddist or quack to 

 another yet more ignoranlly sanguine. If, in the future, 

 the progress of scientific investigation provides a substi- 

 tute for or an adjunct to surgical treatment, there will 



be no needless delay in placing it within the reach of the 

 cancer patient. 



Meantiine, the importance of the investigation of cancer 

 is only too grimly emphasised by its frequency as a cause 

 of death. '1 he number of deaths recorded fro.ii cancer 

 increases from year to year throughout the world, 

 civilised and uncivilised, human and animal. Taking 

 England and Wales as an example, in 18S9, on an 

 average, the chance of a man above thirty-five years 

 ultimately dying of cancer was one in twenty-one, and for 

 a woman above the same age one in twelve. The in- 

 crease in the number of deaths recorded from cancer 

 makes the corresponding chances to-day one in eleven for 

 men and one in seven for woinen. Scarcely a family of 

 large size escapes attack. There is no circle of acquaint- 

 ances, no chance assemblage of persons at a table d'hdte 

 or in a tube lift, but contains prospective victims. But is 

 cancer really increasing? The accurate use of statistics, 

 and the careful scrutiny of the scientific value of the data 

 upon which they are based, still withhold an affirmative 

 answer. If it be further asked, Is not cancer much more 

 frequent in races living under European civilisation than 

 in the rest of mankind? recent investigation has disposed 

 of the fiction that many races of mankind are exempt. 

 Where the disease was said to be rare, e.^». in Japan, 

 there are excellent statistics of which Europeans were 

 previously ignorant proving the great frequency of cancer 

 among the Japanese, and, taking another example, in- 

 vestigations in Indian hospitals show that certain forms 

 of cancer very common in London hospitals are probably 

 not less common in hospitals throughout Hindustan. In 

 the case of most other races there are insurmountable 

 difficulties in the way of even thus roughly estimating 

 its frequency among them. Therefore it is idle to affirm 

 or to deny that cancer may be more common in some 

 races than in others. The disease occurs throughout thf 

 human race, and its association with forms of chronti 

 irritation having nothing in common beyond this associa- 

 tion is a fact of more moment than any futile discussion 

 of the relative liability of different races. The additions, 

 during six years, to our knowledge of its occurrence in 

 man, as well as in tame and wild animals, tell hard 

 against those who, at the close of the nineteenth century, 

 argued that the increase in the number of deaths attributed 

 to cancer was real, and merely a penalty for living under 

 the influences of European civilisation. 



Much additional evidence has been obtained of the extent 

 to which cancer pervades the vertebrate scale. The 

 similarity of the disease throughout vertebrates is illus- 

 trated most diagrammatically by a series of preparations 

 of skin-cancers from mammals to marine fish living in a 

 state of nature. Wherever data are available, for animals 

 as for man, the liability to cancer is shown to be greatest 

 in the last third of the span of life, whether it be short 

 or long; the "age-incidence" of cancer in man has 

 acquired enhanced significance by the establishment of 

 this generalisation. 



The widening of our knowledge of the occurrence of 

 cancer is only one example of how revived interest in 

 mere observation has put an end to the era of unverified, 

 and often unvcrifiable, speculation which characterised the 

 last twenty years of the nineteenth century, when exact 

 methods of studying the clinical course, the anatomy, and 

 the microscopical structure of tumours had reached their 

 natural limitations. The study of cancer solely from the 

 standpoint of its being an infective disease had yielded 

 equivocal and self-contradictory results. Statistical methods 

 had become barren from want of data to work on. No 

 point vulnerable to an attack in the rear by the experi- 

 mental method could be discerned.' In short, there was 

 a standstill in the advance of knowledge. As is usual in 

 all similar epochs in the progress of science, observation, 

 hypothesis, and experiment had ceased to advance hand 

 in hand. The arm-chair speculator had the field to him- 

 .self. With only the knowledge derived from the bedside, 

 the study of the structure of tumours in man, imper- 



inatter of fact, such a point of attack bad existed 

 nau and Morau bad successfully inoculated 

 neage 



the 



to another, hu! thi 

 ihe significance . f th 

 which had 



NO. 2044, VOL. 79] 



h had either failed to realis 

 p. rfect w ork or had been baffled by the difficullie 

 attempting to imitate it. 



