880 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1121 



enough that the folly of one generation has 

 been the wisdom of the next ! 



Von Hansemann has said^ that crown 

 gall has nothing in common with cancer 

 except its name (Krebs). I am quite will- 

 ing to let specialists weigh my evidence and 

 decide for themselves, if only they will 

 wake up and begin to do so ! not simply 

 ignore the whole subject because it comes 

 to them from an unusual quarter, and is 

 "too botanical," as another German editor 

 said in refusing one of my papers. 



In his "Principles of Pathology"^ Doctor 

 Adami gives the following as the char- 

 acteristics of the atypical (malignant) 

 tumors: (1) Vegetative (embryonic) char- 

 acter of the tumor cells; (2) rapidity of 

 growth; (3) peripheral extension, lack of 

 capsule and infiltration of the surrounding 

 tissues; (4) tendency to develop metastases; 

 (5) tendency to central degenerative 

 changes; (6) liability to recurrence after 

 removal; (7) cachexia; (8) anemia. All of 

 these occur in crowm gall except 4 and 8. 

 There is nothing in the plant correspond- 

 ing to blood, and the rigid cell-wall of the 

 plant prevents metastasis in the true sense 

 of that word. But if we use metastasis in 

 Eibbert's loose way, then metastasis also 

 occurs in crown gall. 



One of the striking things about cancer 

 and one separating it off sharply from all 

 other animal diseases, is the fact that the 

 secondary tumors are not granulomatous 

 proliferations. That is, the secondary 

 tumors are not a growth-response of local 

 tissues to an irritation, and hence are not 

 comparable to the protective granulations 

 formed in the healing of a wound or in 

 such a disease as tuberculosis, but they are 

 due to the migration from the initial tumor 

 either of infected cells or of deteriorated 



* Zeitschrift fur Krehsforschung, 12te Bd., 1913, 

 p. 146. 



BVol. I., p. 671. 



cells which continually reproduce their own 

 kind to the detriment of all others. The 

 cancer cell is a lawless entity, different in 

 its tendencies and capabilities from any 

 other cell of the body, and so far as we 

 know, it always reproduces its kind, the 

 daughter cells being cancer cells and not 

 normal cells. Why this is so is wholly un- 

 known in human and animal pathology, 

 but that it is so admits of no doubt what- 

 ever. To illustrate: If medical men were 

 able to reach into the center of tubercle 

 nodules or syphilitic nodules in the human 

 body, and kill the nest of pathogenic bac- 

 teria in the one case and of pathogenic 

 protozoa in the other case, without injuring 

 the unparasitized barrier cells forming the 

 periphery of these nodules, then these cells 

 would be immediately destroyed and re- 

 moved from the body as no longer of use, or 

 else would behave once more as normal 

 body cells (scar tissue). In cancer, on the 

 contrary, as every surgeon knows, if any 

 cancer cells are left after an operation — 

 even the least number — they are likely to 

 reproduce their evil kind, in which ease an- 

 other tumor results either in the old local- 

 ity or in some other part of the body. In 

 other words, the outermost cancer cells are 

 not barricades erected by the body to pre- 

 vent further encroachments of the enemy, 

 but are self-multiplying outposts of the 

 enemy himself. However, this does not 

 militate against the belief that some of the 

 elements in a malignant tumor are harm- 

 less ones. 



Very few laymen, I believe, have any 

 clear conception of the exact mechanism of 

 the cancerous process, and not a few physi- 

 cians also seem to be ignorant of it. Can- 

 cers are the result of the multiplication in 

 the body of certain body cells which have 

 become abnormal and dangerous to the rest 

 of the body, or as we say "cancerous," a 

 single cell or a few cells to begin with, then 



