XIV PROCEEDINGS. 



film, and detailed the action on the latter of sensitizers and 

 developers. Among such are alkaloids, the substances in 

 tobacco smoke, and tannin bodies. Prof. Joli, unable to 

 find any custom of the populace to account for increase 

 of cancer, inquired as to change of food in the last decades, 

 and he finds an increased use of tea and coffee, both tannin 

 containing bodies. Relative to the action of nicotine and 

 tobacco smoke, he stated that in cases of cancer of the mouth 

 with us, males are in a majority, whilst in the East where both 

 sexes chew the alkaloid-containing betel nut the cases are 

 more evenly distributed between the sexes. His suggestion 

 is that these bodies mentioned sensitize the cells so that they 

 are responsive to the stimulus which starts the cell into 

 abnormal growth. Thus we have an addition to the list 

 of food stuffs which have been blamed as causes of cancer. 



Two years ago I referred to the cancer problem and it 

 is still as pressing a subject for research as ever it was. The 

 cell of abnormal growth is still a puzzle to medical science 

 and biology. May we in a flight of imagination conceive,, 

 the cancer cell with its abnormal mitosis as a type of the 

 pre-evolved cell existing before Nature by trial and elimina- 

 tion had found the normal cell with its even and orderly 

 division of chromosomes — the cell that survived. The 

 ancients in their evolutionary ideas spoke of the beginings 

 of life as shapeless masses without form, a description 

 that fits a cancerous mass, and the active proliferation of 

 the abnormal cell reminds one of an organism injured and 

 doomed to die putting forth every effort to propagate its 

 species. 



The discovery of the X-rays and their then known pro- 

 perties by which they became a valuable adjunct to surgery 

 made a powerful appeal to the mind of the general public. 

 Their use to medical science has greatly increased since 

 the early days by improvement in technique which has been 

 progressive down to the'present time, and we read of advances 



