: 1894.] The Parasitic Protozoa Found in Cancerous Diseases. 307 
THE PARASITIC PROTOZOA FOUND IN 
CANCEROUS DISEASES. 
By Arice BODINGTON. 
In the British Medical Journal for Feb. 26th, 1893, the 
“steady increase of cancer” is spoken of as a subject requiring 
serious attention, and as far back as 1887-8, the Council of the 
Association drew the attention of the Registrar-General to the 
“steady increase in the deaths from cancer,” out of proportion 
to the deaths from all causes, and showed that similar condi- 
tions exist in most civilized countries. The “increasing mortality 
from this terrible disease, not merely kills nearly twenty thou- 
sand persons in England and Wales alone ” [the southern part 
of one small island !] but kills the vast majority of them by 
slow and cruel torture continued during a long series of 
months, sometimes of years.” Cancer, like insanity, seems 
specially to find in the highest conditions of civilization a hot 
bed in which it flourishes and spreads; and any clue which 
can guide civilized man to the secret of grappling successfully 
with this hitherto unconquerable foe, will be one of the great- 
est boons which science can confer upon mankind. To know 
where the enemy lurks, and in what form, is, in the case of 
parasitic diseases, not only half but sometimes all the battle ; 
as the almost complete immunity from cholera of England has 
shown. 
An army of keen observers has endeavoured for many years 
past to discover, if possible, the exciting cause of cancer, but 
till lately the prospect of discovering the foe appeared hope- 
less. The theory which seemed most firmly established, most 
consonant with scientific theory, was at the same time a 
singularly hopeless one. It was assumed that at the decline 
of life, or under conditions of lowered vitality in the whole or 
part of the body, certain yonic structu especially of the 
kind known as “survivals ”—took on an abnormal growth, and 
Tloted in the production of epithelial cells of a low type which 
