BODY METABOLISM IN CANCER. 299 



has extended over a period of five or six weeks, or occasionally even 

 more, so that the work has necessarily taken up a considerable period 

 of time. Owing also to exigencies of the special work of the laboratory 

 staff, and of official duties on the part of the member of this committee 

 to whom the investigation was entrusted, delay in the prosecution of the 

 work has from time to time proved unavoidable. 



As the work is still in progress it would serve no useful purpose, on 

 the present occasion, to enter into details of the numerous experiments 

 performed. It is therefore proposed here only to set out a brief state- 

 ment of the main results which thus far have been obtained. 



As a preliminary step a number of mice were injected hypodermically 

 with a 2 per cent, solution of spermin in normal saline solution, in 

 quantities varying from - l to 0"4 c.c, in order to make certain that 

 the employment of this substance was not productive of any ill-effect 

 on the mouse. This having proved to be the case with these doses, four 

 mice which had been inoculated just previously with O05 grm. of 



tumour -j— in the left axilla, were subsequently injected daily, with 



the exception of Sundays, for a period of seventeen days, with 0'4 c.c. 

 of the spermin solution. By this date three out of the four 

 tumours which had arisen in these mice, as the result of inoculation, 

 had entirely disappeared, while of eight tumours which had arisen in ten 

 control mice, inoculated on the same date, none had disappeared, 

 although two had somewhat decreased in size. 



On February 4 of the present year twenty mice were inoculated 

 with a very rapidly growing strain of tumour, of which ten were kept 

 as controls in a separate cage. A week later tumours had appeared in 

 all these mice. From this date, for a period of nearly three weeks, ten 

 of the mice were injected daily, except on Saturdays and Sundays, with 

 0'4 c.c. of the spermin solution. As by this time the result obtained 

 with the injected as compared with the control mice merely showed 

 differences which might be considered as coming within the limit of 

 experimental variation, the work was not continued. 



In view of the apparent difference of result obtained in these two 

 experiments, Dr. Bashford suggested that for future work it would be 

 desirable to employ for purposes of inoculation a slow but continuously 

 growing tumour (Twort 30B.), which, in this respect, most nearly 

 reproduces the characteristics of a spontaneously occurring tumour. 

 With this material Dr. Murray inoculated forty mice on March 4, of 

 which ten were kept as controls, the other thirty being divided into 

 three lots of ten each, and kept in separate cages. These were respec- 

 tively injected daily — (a) with fresh emulsion of mouse testes 0'4 c.c. 

 each; (b) with spermin solution; and (c) Poehl's orchidin solution in 

 similar quantities. On March 21 eight tumours had developed in each 

 lot of ten mice, while one of the controls had died. By April 4, of 

 the spermin series, five of the tumours had disappeared; of the testicle 

 emulsion series all eight tumours showed a definite increase in size ; 

 while of the orchidin series the tumours exhibited no appreciable differ- 

 ence from those of the controls. At this point the experiment was 

 unavoidably interrupted. 



