THE
PROBLEMS OF CANCER 99
they
represent a real conjugation, the preparations ought to carry conviction to the
minds of embryologists and cytologists, such as, to name three Wurzburg ones,
Stöhr, Schultze, and Sobotta. This is improbable, for the true nature of the
preparations shown last July* at Oxford appears to me to be fairly clear.
Very
common among pathologists is a modification of the Remak-Cohnheim theory of
embryonic rests as the basis of neoplasms. This doctrine of “shunted germs,”
only possible under the erroneous dogma of epigenesis, has many followers,
especially in Germany. The apparent manifold variety of the malignant tumours,
which fortunately is not real, led to the conclusion that they were made up of
embryonic or somatic cells; that, for example, a primary cancer of the liver or
kidney was composed of liver or kidney cells, and so on. The embryological Conclusions
to be advanced here, and which are based on research, do not permit of that explanation.
A malignant tumour is such in virtue of the facts, among others, that its cells
are not embryonic (though they may mimic such, or even resemble no other
cells in the human body), and, that, like cells of the trophoblast or chorion
of normal development, the neoplasm eats or erodes its way through other
structures, even through living bone. On the other hand, a benign tumour does
consist solely of somatic or embryonic cells. Its tissues are normal in
structure, for it is a true embryoma, or more or less rudimentary embryo, in
Wilms’s sense. A neoplasm is, in short, a futile attempt to repeat a greater or
less portion of the cycle of normal development. A true embryoma recites merely
some greater or less piece of the embryonic portion; a pure cancer or
sarcoma—for these are one and the same thing under different disguises—may
attempt
* 1904.