An address entitled Are the problems of cancer insoluble? : delivered before the Brighton and Sussex Medico-Chirurgical Society on December 7th, 1905 / by E.F. Bashford.

  • Bashford, Ernest Francis, 1873-
Date:
[1905]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: An address entitled Are the problems of cancer insoluble? : delivered before the Brighton and Sussex Medico-Chirurgical Society on December 7th, 1905 / by E.F. Bashford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    that cancers are themselves organisms implanted from individual to individual; that they are specific to the species, or even race, whose vitality they sap. and directly descended from some primeval cancer which started in remote geological ages. The supposition is entirely irrational and is disproved by the fact that cancer is constantly a disease of old age, whereas old age is not necessary for the transmission and growth of cancer ; there is therefore no reason why cancer, transmitted as supposed, should not prefer youthful animals, instead of being increasingly frequent as age advances. This reductio ad absurdum is but one demonstration of the value of the comparative and experi- mental method of studying cancer. In the light of the knowledge we now possess many of the problems that faced us three years ago have been solved and many of the confusing statements to which I have drawn attention cease to be worthy of serious consideration. The occurrence of cancer in codfish off the Banks of Newfoundland may not show that icebergs and fogs cause cancer, but it does show that dwelling in the neighbourhood of trees, or on a clay soil, living under the influence of civilisation or indulgence in alcohol, are not indispensable to the appearance of cancer. Time prevents me adding many facts to those I have laid before you. I can only allude to the valuable aid the statistical investigations have been to the others, and state that the minute study of the prolonged artificial propagation of cancer shows that the energy and the amount of proliferation fluctuate from causes inherent in the cells themselves. This study led us to discard, as being incompatible with the facts, the working hypothesis that growth might be maintained by the inter- calation of heterotypical mitoses (like those of reproductive tissue), followed by nuclear fusion. In our investigations we have obtained evidence against all the explanations yet advanced as to the cause and nature of cancer, proof that cancer cells have not reverted to an embryonic undifferentiated state, or that the growth and ceaseless cell division of cancer resemble the intermittent growth and cell division of reproductive tissue, or that the artificial propagation of cancer resembles the grafting practised by horticulturists in the propagation of plants and trees. Thus at present any attempts directly to ascertain the cause and nature of cancer are surrounded by so many sources of fallacy that to my mind tney remain to-day as unprofitable as they have been in the past. The attempt to produce cancer experimentally—e. g., by chronic irritation—for what form of chronic irritation is constant throughout the vertebrate scale?—is also surrounded with great difficulty, not the
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