The study of experimental cancer : a review.

  • Woglom, William Henry, 1879-1953.
Date:
1913
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of experimental cancer : a review. 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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    unknown in Europeans, occurs ^^•ith great frequency among the natives of India follo-^ing chronic irritation produced by the use of the betel-nut or Kangri basket. '. . . it becomes necessary to postulate further a uniform and abundant distribution of embryonic rests' over the body, or to assume a different distribution of embryonic rests in Europeans and native races, coinciding with the points they respec- tivelv select for the indulgence of various practices invohdng the appli- cation of peculiar irritations. And further: ''Suffice it to sa}^ that if all forms of cancer are to be explained by such speculations and the interA'ention of congenital 'germs is to hold good for all cases, then it must be assumed that such germs are as uniformly distributed, e.g. over the surface of the body of all vertebrates as the skin is itseh. and thus the explanation becomes no explanation at aU. While, in the opinion of Ribbert.^ many carcinomata almost cer- tainlv took their origin from embryonal cell rests, it was evident that such structures were not invariably able to assume the malignant tvpe of growth, since many of them lay indefinitely quiescent. .\lthough they possessed, in common with other epithehal cell groups, the normal tendency to penetrate underhing connective tissue, this latter must, under ordinary conditions, exert some sort of inhibitory influence preventing invasion on the part of the epithehum. and not until this opposition had been removed could the potential energies of the epithelium be unfolded. The release of the normal invasive faculty was brought about through the presence in the connective tissue of simple hyperemia, or of inflammatorv' lesions such as round cell infiltration, or proliferation of the fixed elements with a con- comitant production of blood vessels, an analogous situation occur- ring in the development of glandular structures in the embryo, where downgrowth of epithelium was always preceded by alterations in the subjacent tissue. Xevertheless. in the fully developed organism at least, cellular changes in the connective tissue did not invariably ehcit epithehal invasion, for inflammation, even though it continued over an extended period of time, was not always followed by the development of carcinoma. Hence, the inflammatory lesions which ^ Arch. f. path. Anat., etc., rvircliovrj. 1894, cxxx\-, 433. Geschu'idstlehre, Bonn, 1904, 552. Das Karzinom des Menschen, Bonn, 1911, 482.