The application of experiment to the study of cancer / by E.F. Bashford.

  • Bashford, Ernest Francis, 1873-
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The application of experiment to the study of cancer / by E.F. Bashford. 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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    other growths. There is thus a degree of protection which is common, and a certain degree which is specific. The spontaneous disappearance of tumours occurs, entirely beyond our control as yet. But the protection it confers can be imitated artificially. The same degree of common protection can be conferred by the preceding inoculation of tumour material if followed by no growth, i.e. if absorbed, and this is not so remarkable as the fact that it can be induced also by the injection of the normal tissues of the mouse and most readily by normal blood ; but not by the cancers or tissues of alien species. The far-reaching signifi- cance of the protection which can be induced by carcinomatous, by sarcomatous, or by normal tissues, causes me to emphasise that our observations and Ehrlich’s are in essential agreement. We require to learn whether the protection thus conferred is actively induced or only passively conferred. In the case of blood this question was most easily settled. The protection is not passively conferred by the serum, but is actively induced by the blood cells. To sum up, we are able to so modify the soil provided by mice that cancer cannot grow in it. For indications of the change we are dependent on the behaviour of the living cancer cell in the living mouse; we are dependent on experiment absolutely. Jensen recorded the disappearance of tumours in 1902-3. The first occasion on which we noticed a large transplanted tumour disappear was while studying a batch of mice with his tumour in August 1904. This tumour was exhaustively studied, and the important part phagocytosis played in the process discovered, not only in the case of this entire tumour, but in more limited areas of a very large number of tumours. We have since recorded the same process for other carcinomata, and its importance has been emphasised by others, especially by Clowes. We have observed the same process in localised areas of spontaneous tumours. There can therefore be no doubt that the animal primarily attacked attempts to protect itself by the same means as a normal animal after successful inoculation. The investigation of the nature of protection is bound up with very great difficulties, which are not diminished by the absence of any analogy with what we know of immunity to infective diseases. Up to the present I have spoken of the propagation of the tumours as if it meant a mere culture in vivo of the cancer cells. This, however, is only part of the truth.
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