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                                    THE EMBRYOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY OF TUMOURS                          89

 

and this included the above words, and sent it to the editor of Ziegler’s Beiträge, and of the Centralblatt für allgemeine Pathologie, the celebrated pathologist and man of science, the late Geheimrat Dr. Ernst von Ziegler, Pro­fessor in Ordinary of Pathology in the University of Frei­burg in Breisgau, with the request that he would publish it in the latter scientific journal. He replied that not only would he do so, but that he would have it translated into German, so that more people might read it. It appeared in full in vol. xiv., pp. 513-520, 1903. In March, 1905, some two years later, a discussion took place in Berlin upon cancer. This is reported in the Berliner kiln. Wochenschrift, 1905, No. 13. The same number contains the brilliant speech contributed to the discussion by Dr. L. Pick.* In the course of this Pick proved, step by step, in actual instances and on actual specimens, the scientific truth of the statement that an ordinary cancer (carcinoma) may, on occasion, arise from the chorion or trophoblast, that at times this exhibits the structural appearance of chorio-epithelioma, at others of ordinary cancer—” das gewohnliche Carcinom.” In this place I cite the opinion of Dr. L. Pick as that of one fully com­petent, not only to give a judgment of great scientific value on this question, but to defend it.

Embryologists and pathologists might have been ex­pected to have taken the following words ** by the late

*  For a summary and translation of this, see Appendix B.

 

** Giacomini, C.: “Probleme aus Entwickelungsanomalien d. menschlichen Embryo,” in Ergebn. Anat. u. Entwickelungs­gesch, 1894, vol. iv., pp. 615-649; loc. cit., p. 640. The actual words are: “Das Chorion ist von alien Bildungen des Eies diejenige, welche vor jeder anderen entsteht, sich bald von den anderen Teilen unabhängig macht, und indem es frühzeitig seine Zellen entwickelt, in den Stand gesetzt wird, zu leben und zu entwickeln, auch wenn alle anderen Teile des Eies durch irgend weichen Umstand aufgehört haben, zu existieren.”

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