THE EMBRYOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY OF TUMOURS 85
Through
other species of Styhfer, Entocolax ludwigii is reached. This is
parasitic in the body-cavity of a sea-cucumber (a Holothurian), and with the
endoparasitism the shell, mantle, gills, and sense organs disappear. The series
culminates in Entoconcha mirabilis, parasitic in the sexual organs of a
sea-cucumber (Synapta digitata). This is nothing but a worm-like sac,
containing (hermaphrodite) sexual organs. In its organization there is nothing
whatever of molluscan characters, and its true nature can only be made out in
one or other of two ways: by the comparative anatomy of the series of such
parasitic mollusca, which reveals all the stages from highly organized forms
down to absolute reduction of most or all of the organs, or by the study of the
development; for, as Johannes Muller showed in one of his classic works, Entoconcha
is a true gasteropod, with shell and other organs.
As
it is impossible to follow the whole development of a tumour from its first
start, and as many of them attain only a very low degree of embryonic
differentiation, the series of forms in them, leading from the highest to the
lowest, from the most organized to the simple ones, can only be followed after the
method of comparative anatomy, and this is the plan adopted by Wilms in his
researches. From the results of a study of tumours made in this way, and with
the facts established by the writer’s researches upon the germ-cells, and the
course of the cycle of development of the higher animals, the following
conception* of the true nature of a neoplasm or tumour is obtained.
A tumour
is a more or less reduced, more or less incom-
* It should be specially noted that in
this definition malignant tumours (carcinoma and sarcoma) are
excluded—only tumours representing the sexual generation are included.