Review of recent cancer research / by E.F. Bashford.

  • Bashford, E. F. (Ernest Francis), 1873-
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Review of recent cancer research / by E.F. Bashford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    does not grow because of a constitution or a soil suitable for the growth of cancer, in general. A lowering of the affinity of the body cells as a whole for food-stuffs with retention of a higher avidity by the tumour cells would not, for example, explain can- cer. It was made evident that the origin and growth of cancer involved problems individual to each animal, and—in the absence of any evidence of a constitutional change favourable to the growth of cancer—it appears possible that the hereditary influ- ence is rather one of the tissue affected than any change in the body as a whole. This conclusion as to indixiduality has been borne out by other observations. Normal mice, young and old, have been housed in the same room for the length of life, to- gether with mice highly susceptible to and constantly developing cancer; but no excess of cases occurred in the former. They were no more lialjle to cancer than mice kept free from all such outside influence. The same negative result has also been ob- tained where, during many years, as many as 10,000 to 20,000 mice inoculated with cancer have been kept in one room together with normal animals. Tumours did not develop with any greater frequency than in animals not so exposed. These results agree with those for men, since it cannot be shown that the den- sity of population has any influence on the frequency of cancer in contrast with its marked influence in the case of tuberculosis. The bearing of all this statistical study on etiology is that it gives.no sort of indication that a problem of infection is in- volved, although the importance of chronic irritation and of an inherited and possibly a tissue susceptibility is clearly brought out. The irritants having nothing in common, it seemed rational for this and other reasons t(^ seek for the common factor in prop- erties of the tumour cells tliomselves, and to follow up the unin- tentional experiments of native races, by carefully observing the l)ehaviour of tumour cells during years of prolonged prolifera- tion, more es])ccially because at the \ ery beginning ol our ex- periments we noic(l snch niai-ked \arialions dccurring f]-i>m lime to time in Inniors of the same strain, lliat a person ignorant (•f its historv would certainlv have held thev were reallv distinct