The bearing of immunity reactions on the nature of cancer / by E.F. Bashford.

  • Bashford, E. F. (Ernest Francis), 1873-
Date:
1914
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The bearing of immunity reactions on the nature of cancer / by E.F. Bashford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [Friday Morning, August 8] SUB-SECTION III (a) CHEMICAL PATHOLOGY DISCUSSION No. 2 (Jointly with Section IV, Bacteriology and Immunity, Discussion No. 2) CANCER Report by E. F. BASHFORD, M.D., London The Bearing of Immunity Reactions on the Nature of Cancer The early experience gained from the grafting of cancer of the mouse has been amplified in the laboratories of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund by many experiments on other animals, especially the horse, dog, rabbit, guinea-pig, and rat, in all of which, except the first, true tumours have been transplanted. In consequence, sharp distinctions may be drawn to-day with great confidence, between heterologous, homologous, and autologous inoculations. Moreover, the employment of the term immunity with reference to cancer has been found subject to very narrow limitations, since, as will be demonstrated, it signifies nothing more than the exemption—under clearly defined circumstances—of one individual from the consequences of transplanting a tumour from another individual of the same species. The employment of the term immunity with reference to cancer in the present state of our knowledge is really wrong, because, as pointed out in 1906, the resistance which can be induced artificially to the continued growth of grafts does not create any exemption from the liability to the development of cancer. It is also certain that cancer is rarely, if ever, communicated naturally or spontaneously from one individual to another by transplantation, and that its great frequency cannot be explained in this way. The mechanism of its natural develop¬ ment therefore differs fundamentally from transplantation, and the use of the term * immunity ’ can only be justified by convenience. Resistance to the transplantation of cancer comprises a large number of phenomena which are of the nature of hindrances to the continued growth of the already fully developed cancer-cell. The analysis of these phenomena has permitted of the discovery of some subtle properties of the cancer-cell, as well as of some of the relations obtaining between it and the animal in which it grows, both in the case of the natural and of the transplanted cancer-cell.