APPENDIX
A
THE LIVERPOOL LECTURE :* GERM CELLS AND
THE CANCER PROBLEM.
LAST
evening Dr. John Beard, University Lecturer on Comparative Embryology,
Edinburgh, delivered an address at the Liverpool University Anatomical Society
upon “Germ-Cells in Relation to Malignant Disease.” In the opening statements
reference was made to the supposed cancer parasite, and the curative serum
recently brought forward by Doyen, of Paris; to the secret treatment now being
used by Professor Opitz, of Marburg ; and to the recently issued pessimistic
report of the American Cancer Commission. There was, of course, remarked the
speaker, no cancer parasite; but did such a thing exist, the Parisian one could
not be the real article, for a well-known pathologist was about to publish an
account of what he (the pathologist) held to be the only true cancer parasite.
Thus one advocate of the parasitic theory refuted another, and the American
Cancer Commission denied, with the great majority of pathologists, the
existence of any cancer parasite. In the telegraphic summary of the American
report there were only three statements not open to challenge. These were that
the best remedy was early operation, that cancer was not due to any parasite,
but that it was probably connected with errors of development. Notwithstanding
all that
* From the Liverpool
Daily Post and Mercury, January 21, 1905.
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