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90
1908]
terror of the frequent recurrence. As a palliative measure, there is no
doubt that surgery has relieved an immense burden of human suffering,
that its early employment should be consistently urged, and that its
results are among the greatest achievements of practical medicine, but
surgery is in no proper sense a cure for cancer. At best it mechanically
removes the disease from immediate consideration. Hence the prospect
of a rational cure of cancer has always been acknowledged as one of the
most hopeless outlooks in medical science.
"What is the reason why medical science has always branded this
field as barren territory ? It is because the method of study by means of
animal experimentation was not thought applicable to the subject of
cancer. Diphtheria has been conquered, because we can reproduce the
disease in animals, study the process under controllable conditions, and
test for its cure the antitoxic agents prepared according to the accepted
theories of the laboratory. None of these methods was thought applicable
to the study of cancer, because it did not seem to be transferable
from man to animal, and the disease had not been produced experimentally.
"But a new era has opened in the investigation of cancer, and this
time it bears closely upon the rational cure of the disease. At last the
experimental method has been made available for this work. It has been
found that certain cancers of mice, rats, and dogs, may be transferred to
animals of the same species. By Hanau in Germany, Moreau in France,
Loeb in America, and Jensen in Denmark, after much difficulty and doubt
for the experimenters themselves and from their medical colleagues, it has
been fully proven (1901-2) that certain genuine cancers of mice and rats
may be leadily transferred from one animal to another and studied under
the exact conditions of a laboratory experiment. The significance of
these discoveries has been at once appreciated so that in all civilized
countries elaborate preparations have been made, under government
support, to study cancer chiefly by the experimental method. We are
giving full rein 1.0 these cancers in lower animals. The best soil for their
propagation, the best conditions and nutriment for their growth, are
being carefully searched out and liberally provided. The conditions
unfavorable for growth and the action of agents inhibiting their progress
are also being determined in minute detail, so that in half a decade a
great many new facts about the growth and control of cancer in lower
animals have been elicited and an extensive new literature has
accumulated.