On the origin of cancer / by James Ross.

  • Ross, James.
Date:
[between 1870 and 1890?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the origin of cancer / by James Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    c. ON THE ORIGIN OF CANCER. By JAMES ROSS, M.D., WATERFOOT, NEAR MANCHESTER, In discussing such a question as the Origin of Cancer, in a short paper like the present, it is absolutely necessary to take some propositions for granted, since it is impossible to subject every statement which can be made with regard to the origin of the disease to rigid analysis. It will be generally conceded that cancer is neither propagated by contagion, nor by inoculation; and that it is probably never developed in a healthy individual by continued irritation, unless there is an inherited tendency to the growth of the disease, or of its allies. The truth of these propositions will, at any rate, he taken for granted here. The object of the present paper is to show that cancer may have been developed from inno¬ cent epithelial growths, by continued irritation acting upon these growths as they appear in a succession of individuals, and causing them to deviate further and further from healthy tissues. It is evident that every deviation produced must be of such a nature as to become inherited, otherwise it would be impossible to get an accumulated action in a succession of individuals. Suppose, for instance, that an individual has a small growth (A), which by irritation becomes (A + R), it is manifest that if neither (A) nor (A + R) reappear in the offspring, no accumulation of results is possible. Even if (A) alone is bequeathed to the offspring, it would only become (A + R) under the irritation supposed, and the result in a succession of organisms would still not be cumu¬ lative. But if both (A) and (R) are inherited, the growth (A + R) would tend to appear in the offspring at a certain age, and this, by continued irritation, might become (A + 2 R); and, if the latter were transmitted, it would, under similar circumstances of irritation in the next generation, become (A + 8 R); and so on