Therapeutics : some reactions of the blood after cancer innoculation / J.A. Shaw-MacKenzie.

  • Shaw-Mackenzie, John A. (John Alexander), 1857-1933.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Therapeutics : some reactions of the blood after cancer innoculation / J.A. Shaw-MacKenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In July, 1912, Dr. G. Carrington Purvis, now Medical Officer of Health, Grahamstown, who was home from South Africa, gave me some serum which he had obtained, some two years previously, after several inoculations of human cancerous material in a sheep. At that time he sent home to the Scottish Microscopical Society slides of some fungoid growths which he had obtained from human cancerous tissues by certain cultural methods, namely, by placing pieces of cancerous tissues in sodium salicylate and saline solution.! . He had proceeded to inoculate the sheep with these fungoid growths and the cancerous tissues (scirrhus and epithelioma) in which these vegetable growths were developing. His object was to prepare a cytolytic serum, or a serum which would kill the cells of cancer occurring in a human being.” My examination of the solution in which mouse tumour had been recently kept by Dr. Purvis showed that the fluid increased.the action of pancreatic lipase more than sodium salicylate and saline did alone or in combination ; that is to say, the cancerous tissue had imparted some of its activating properties to the solution; no antitryptic action was exerted by the solution or by sodium salicylate and saline. The experiment detailed in Table II shows the results I obtained on examination of the inoculated sheep serum. This experiment was repeated four times with similar results, namely (a) the lipoclastic accelerating action of the serum of the inoculated sheep was somewhat reduced as compared with normal fresh sheep serum; (4) the antitryptic action was completely absent. The inoculated sheep serum was, however, old, preserved in the usual way with antiseptic, and therefore no conclusion could be arrived at. It corresponded, nevertheless, in both reactions, to what I had observed previously in therapeutic preparations of antidiphtheritic serum and of other antitoxic sera and vaccines. ‘Tuberculin, for instance, gives a low lipoclastic acceleration, while the antitryptic action is absent. Similar-reactions are found with calf vaccine lymph, the material for which examination I am indebted to Dr. A. B. Green. In this category perhaps I may include the serum of pregnancy, similar reduced reactions having been found in this condition in the rabbit and guinea-pig. In human pregnancy, however, the antitryptic action of the serum is increased (Table III). : In fresh antitoxic diphtheria serum the lipoclastic acceleration is somewhat reduced as compared with normal fresh horse serum ; the antitryptic action is present, but not increased. For these specimens I am indebted to Dr. H. H. Dale. I am still further indebted to Dr. J. Biernacki and Dr. A. L. Dykes for 1 According to Dr. Purvis’s method, small pieces of cancerous tissue (about ; inch cube) are placed in flasks containing about go c.c. of a one per cent. solution of sodium salicylate in 0-6-0°7 saline, about three pieces to each flask, and the tissue should remain in the solution from a week or ten days to four or six weeks, before inoculation. One piece with about 7 c.c. of the solution is used for each inoculation, 2G. C, Purvis, Lancet, 1912, ii, 438, and Proceedings Scottish Micr, Soc., 1912, vol. vi, Pp. 43
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