On the occurrence of heterotypical mitoses in cancer / by E.F. Bashford and J.A. Murray.

  • Bashford, Ernest Francis, 1873-
Date:
1906
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the occurrence of heterotypical mitoses in cancer / by E.F. Bashford and J.A. Murray. 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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    , t> [Reprinted from the Proceedingslc^tiie Ro^al SocriffT-Y, 13. Vol. 77] / r^. % ^6 Ah c On the Occurrence of Het^^pimh-Mitoses' in Cancer. By E. F. Bashford, M.D., B.Sc. (Communicated by J. Rose Bradford, M.D., F.R.S. Received November 2,— Read November 23, 1905.) [Plates 5 and 6.] The present paper refers to a communication* made to the Royal Society in January, 1904. In that paper and its expansion,! published later, we emphasised the significance of the zoological distribution of cancer; we discussed the unique features of the processes responsible for the experi- mental transmission of carcinoma from one animal to another and the limitations to its successful attainment: we also published a series of figures depicting the characters of the nuclei of cancer cells during division, in the malignant new growths of fishes and mammals. We shall give a different explanation of the mitoses we figured in our earlier communications as resembling the heterotypical mitoses of reproductive tissue. We have found * that those mitoses may be interpreted as somatic mitoses with longitudinally split chromosomes. Their apparent heterotypical form is thus due to variations in the development of the achromatic figure, the peculiar form of the chromosomes and their mode of attachment to the spindle. Our figures of heterotypical mitoses in cancer confirmed the observations of Farmer, Moore and Walker, communicated! to the Royal Society at the preceding meeting, but we dissociated ourselves from their conclusions on the diagnostic value and the significance of the phenomenon. The amount of chromatin entering into the equatorial plate of the dividing cells of human cancer had long been known to be subject to diminution (von Hansemann,§ 1893), but the presence of heterotypical mitoses appeared to throw a new light on its occurrence and meaning. We have pointed out that the characteristic changes accompanying the heterotypical mitosis in the reproductive tissues are absent from cancer cells undergoing what we regarded as this form of division, and that the want of correspondence extends to the stages which precede and follow it.|| We have * ‘ Roy. Soc. Proc.,’ vol. 73. t First Scientific Report, Cancer Research Fund. t ‘ Roy. Soc. Proc.,’ vol. 72. § ‘Studien fiber die Spezificitiit, den Altruismus und die Anaplasie der Zellen,’ Berlin, 1893, etc.