NATURE 



39' 



TIILRSDAV, FEBRUARY 4, 1909. 



.4 SL'RGEOy A\D A PATHOLOGIST OX 



CAXCER. 



(i) The Xatiiral Ilistury of Cancer. U'///i Special Reler- 



ciice to its Causation and Prevention. By \V. 



Roger Williams. Pp. xiv + 5ig. (London: W. 



Heinemann, igoS.) Price 21s. 

 (2) Lectures on the Pathology of Cancer. By Dr. 



Charles Powell White, Pilkington Cancer Research 



Fellow. Pp. vii + 83; 33 figures. (Manchester: 



University Press, 1908.) Price 3^. 6d. net. 

 (i) nrilE author of this volume has contributed exten- 

 J- sively to the literature of cancer from 1SS2 

 onwards. Both from the scope and from the dura- 

 tion of his inquiries into the various manifestations 

 of this disease in man, he would certainly seem to 

 have earned the right to express opinions to which 

 other students of the subject must give consideration. 

 The volume contains an immense amount of material, 

 partly the harvest of the author's own experience and 

 partly culled from the literature of the subject. This 

 rich collection of facts, with complete references to 

 the original sources, while evidence of the wide 

 reading of Mr. Williams, must also make the volume 

 valuable in the limited spheres of which it treats as 

 a book of reference for workers on cancer. 



Unfortunately it has not been the author's desire to 

 make the compilation and digest of much of the 

 literature of cancer the main purpose of his book ; 

 indeed, in this field he has been forestalled by a 

 masterly digest of the literature, which is at the same 

 time an admirable history of the advance in knowledge 

 of cancer, by Dr. Jacob Wolff, " Die Lehre von der 

 Krebskrankheit " (Jena : Fischer, 1907). Rather would 

 the author direct attention to what he is pleased to 

 stigmatise as " the extraordinary concatenation of 

 blunders with which the history of the experimental 

 study of cancer is cumbered," and to the " stagnation 

 of comparative pathology." These serious charges are 

 made because Mr. Williams's " work has hitherto re- 

 ceived no recognition from contemporary pathologists 

 occupied with various will o' the wisps," and because 

 his voice has been crying in the wilderness since 1888, 

 when, by the publication of " The Principles of Cancer 

 and Tumour Formation," he attempted to " repair 

 V'irchow's error, by laying the foundation of a 

 modified cellular pathology, in harmony with modern 

 biology." 



The author is at his best when dealing with the 

 clinical course and the pathology of the disease in man, 

 of which, as a surgeon, he has ripe experience; but 

 most of what he has to say of value appeared in " The 

 Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine," vol. xvii., 

 1899. It is to be regretted that in the fields of general 

 biology he exhibits that combination of imperfect 

 knowledge and intolerance of the conclusions of 

 workers in spheres outside his own, which, only too 

 frequently, have been features of the contributions of 

 a few other authors who during the past three years 

 NO. 2049, VOL. 79] 



have settled the problems of cancer to their own 

 satisfaction in almost equally bulky volumes. 



Mr. Williams is obviously not equipped to deal with 

 the natural history of cancer in the wider sense. 

 -Analogies between lumps of tissue in the higher 

 plants and in the higher animals have no dangers for 

 him in a chapter on " Tumours in Vegetable 

 Organisms," at the end of which he refers the .Acari 

 to the order Insecta. On p. 205 he writes : — 



" It has recently been demonstrated by Boveri and 

 Delage, that denucleated eggs of the sea urchin can 

 be fertilised, when they give rise to the norinal 

 gastrulae and larvaB ; so that . . . the nucleus is not 

 the sole vehicle of heredity." 



Of course, Boveri's experiments led to quite the 

 contrary conclusion. They demonstrated that tlie 

 gastrulse had the characters of the strange species 

 introducing the male nucleus. Mr. Williams's preju- 

 dice in favour of his own case is well illustrated by 

 his allusion to Darwin and Haeckel as " the great 

 lieutenants " of Herbert Spencer, and by his bald 

 statement (p. 357), " I also believe that acquired 

 characters are hereditable." "The phenomena of 

 parthenogenesis are of much interest, as representing 

 a transition from sexual to asexual reproduction," is 

 another positive statement of a dubious validity 

 (p. 207). His main argument is that the frequency 

 of cancer goes hand in hand with the average well- 

 being. The inhabitants of Norway — among whom 

 the death-rate from cancer is about the highest in 

 Europe — are therefore pictured as the best nourished 

 in Europe. .-Xnv Norwegian or Swede would have 

 informed the author that his assumption is erroneous. 

 Referring to the frequency of cancer of the skin of 

 the abdomen in Kashmir (p. 36), where a charcoal 

 oven is worn round the waist, he asserts that " the 

 disease is probably more akin to keloid than to 

 cancer, and, like the former, it is probably due to 

 microbic infection." As a matter of fact, the disease 

 is well known to be cancer of the skin, to form 

 secondary growths in the adjacent lymph-glands, and 

 to follow prolonged chronic irritation. 



These and many equally erroneous dogmatic state- 

 ments, together with the violence of his language 

 when referring to work — biological, pathological, 

 statistical and experimental — incompatible with the 

 views Mr. Williams holds, show that he is unable to 

 interpret his facts without prejudice. It is not sur- 

 prising, therefore, to find that many of the major 

 problems of cancer which still await solution are, for 

 the author, matters no longer admitting of discussion. 

 Indeed, in his preface he claims : — 



" I have devised a new method of cancer research — 

 which may be called synthetic — whereby I have shown 

 that there are modes of life, various habits and so 

 forth which tend to prevent the incidence of cancer 

 almost entirely in healthy stocks, and greatly to 

 reduce its ravages even among the hereditarily 

 disposed." 



The volume contains not a particle of evidence to 

 justify this claim, which is all the more deplorable in 

 that the author goes out of his way time and time 



