THE EMBRYOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY OF TUMOURS 69
development
waiting for recognition in our Universities,* —one whose continued neglect and
exclusion will continue to revenge itself upon mankind, as it has already done
in the past, by a corresponding retardation of priceless knowledge—so there is
also (a branch of the foregoing, and only to be understood in the light of it)
an important field of abnormal embryology, largely represented by the tumours
and their problems—a knowledge of which can only be advanced by aiding and
fostering the former.
In
his magnificent monograph upon tumours Borst writes eloquently of this
pathological embryology as a large and interesting region of knowledge, through
whose mystical portals we penetrate at the moment with feebly burning torches
of comprehension (Erkenntniss), but with the highest expectations. The torches
here spoken of may be identified as those of the science of normal embryology,
than which there is possibly no department of knowledge of more moment to
mankind, and by whose light alone these dark, but to mankind gravely important,
regions can be illumined adequately.
In
studying the views presently advocated as to the etiology of tumours, the
following points are apparent to the embryologist. In their basis, so far as
this is embryological, they are but modifications of the Remak-
* The writer seeks
no such post, although aware that in the last two years of his life the
creation of such a University Chair in London for him was the cherished wish of
the late George Bond Howes, Professor of Zoology in the Royal College of
Science, South Kensington. But it may be pointed out that, unlike Germany and
the United States, Great Britain has to-day not a single University Chair of
Embryology. Had such posts been as common for the last fifty years as those in
many other subjects of infinitely less importance to mankind and to medicine,
the problems of cancer might conceivably have been solved long ago, and
possibly thousands of human beings saved from the torments of malignant
disease.