Cancer

The Lancet. Outside a London newspaper office a crowd gathered last week, at first no more than a small, compact impediment in the current of the Strand's foot passengers, but swelling minute by minute until it bulged, a black protuberance, pulsing with a low, incessant fever and disordering the normal life of the street. Nobody jostled. Men and women stood silent, taken with the sick prescience that infects crowds in the apprehension of some great event --a declaration of war, the birth of a prince.

The event which this extraordinary gathering awaited was the distribution of the latest issue of a medical journal, the Lancet. Previous announcements (TIME, July 20), had informed them that in that journal would appear articles by Dr. W. E. Gye, a one-time ticket agent, by Mr. J. E. Barnard, a prosperous hatter, describing their attempts to isolate the cancer germ. Efforts to obtain advance copies of this gazette by judicious bribing of printers, proofreaders, carriers, had failed. The crowd waited. At 5:30 in the afternoon, the Lancet was issued.

What the Lancet Said. Dr. Gye's report was long and highly technical. It described experiments with the tumors (cancers) of many animals. The conclusions he came to, as reported in the press, are these:

1) That cancer is caused by a virus ultra-minute germ) or group of viruses, and that it is this same virus that produces all kinds of cancers.

2) That the virus alone cannot get a foothold in a living organism and cause cancer.

3) The something else which accompanies the virus when it makes an infection he calls "the specific factor." It is found in extracts from tumors. It may act as an irritant (for chronic irritation is known to promote cancer) or in some similar matter.

4) The peculiar thing about "the specific factor" is that it is apparently the product of the action of the virus growing in a tumor--and it is different for every animal and even for different tissues of the body. So a cancer of any animal, for example, cannot be given to man from an injection of the animal's tumor containing 1) virus and 2 "specific factor" because the "specific factor" is inappropriate. But virus from an animal tumor, and a "specific factor" from a human tumor, will give man tumor.

The Station Agent. Some score of years ago there was a young railroad ticket agent in Derbyshire. He had a great ambition to be a scientist, but he had no money for an education. So he sat and ate out his heart behind a ticket window. His name was Bullock.

Young Bullock had a friend named Gye who had some money. Gye liked Bullock and pretty soon Gye died. Having " faith in Bullock, he left him a legacy on the condition that he take the name of Gye. So Bullock became Gye. He studied at Edinburgh University under Dr. Bennett, a cancer expert. Then he began research. "For the last two years he hasn't had a holiday--Sundays, Christmas or any other day."

The Hatter. In Jermyn Street there is a hat store and at the head of the store is a hatter who has spent his spare time and recreation studying microscopes. After a dozen years or so he became famed in the scientific profession as a microscopic expert. Dr. Gye came along, who was studying viruses--little germs so small that they cannot be taken out of a liquid by the finest filter. He said to the Hatter, whose name was Barnard : "I've got to catch these viruses under a microscope if my experiment is to succeed. Will you do it for me?" And being just about the ablest microscopist in the world, Mr. Barnard did.

The Microscope. The public may not generally realize it, but there is an actual physical limit to the number of times a microscope can enlarge an object. One of the chief factors that determine this limit is the length of the light waves with which an object is seen. The shorter the light rays the greater magnification is possible. Ordinary light waves are about 550 millionths of a millimeter in length and can be used to magnify an object at most 1,500 times. But there are shorter waves (ultra violet) only 275 millionths long that can be used to magnify 3,000 times--but they are not visible.

In 1904 a microscope to use the ultra violet rays was perfected at Jena by a group of German scientists. It had lenses of pure quartz instead of glass. The ultra violet light was provided by an electric spark jumping between two little points of cadmium. And photographic plates were used to catch the invisible light coming up through the lenses with the picture.

The hatter from Jermyn Street learned the high art of using this instrument--a skill so rare that scientists say there is probably no one else in the world who has its equal. Then he made use of his skill.

Dr. Rous' Points. In the U. S, reporters, having heard what the Lancet had to report, rushed to Dr. Rous, upon whose work the research of Dr. Gye, of Mr. Barnard, has its foundation. They found him at his home in Southhold, L. I., begged him for an opinion. Said he: "I have as yet read no scientific accounts of the discovery . . . May I make two points? The first is that the reliance of cancer sufferers should still be upon the surgeon. Secondly, there is a great deal of needless suffering because people are afraid of cancer patients. This is unnecessary, as there is no evidence whatever that cancer is transmitted from one person to another. The discovery of the germ, if it has been made, does not alter this fact."

Other Pronouncements. This "I have read no scientific accounts" was typical of the expressions of many scientists in the U. S., in Britain. Pressmen besieged Dr. William Bradley Coley, famed Manhattan cancer surgeon who looks like a man hammered out of white marble--a face of masses rather than lines, chiseled hair. His voice rumbled up out of the depths of is personal stone quarry. Said he: "I have never heard of them. [Gye, Barnard] . . . Even if their discoveries are proved, it does not mean that a cure for cancer will be quickly found." Said Mr. Herbert W. Carson, surgeon of Harley Street, London: "Don't go wild."

Other noncommittal pronouncements were obtained from Dr. Charles H. Mayo at Rochester, Minn.; Dr. Robert Abbe at Bar Harbor, Me.; Drs. Howard Lilienthal and Henry C. Coe, members of the American Society for the Control of Cancer; Dr. Morris Fishbein, Editor of the A. M. A. Journal; Dr. Francis Carter Wood, Director of the Institute of Cancer Research, Columbia University; Dr. George A. Soper, Director of the American Society for the Control of Cancer; etc., etc., etc.

Facts About Cancer:

Character. Cancer is multiple in character ; its name should be pluralized. It has no relation to venereal disease, except that it may arise on the site of a neglected sore. It is not hereditary, not contagious.

Causes. Local irritation of susceptible cells initiate it--a broken tooth which rubs its sharp edges against the tongue, spectacles that chafe the temple, a blow on the breast.

Prevention. It can be checkmated, in its early stages, by deft and thorough operation. If the smallest particle of cancer cell is overlooked, however, the growth will reappear,' often in some other part of the body--a cancer of the throat creep down to attack the breast, a cancer of the breast suddenly bulge under the arm.

Symptoms. Any sore that will not heal; any lump that persists in the breast; any unnatural discharge; any continuing indigestion which will not yield to ordinary medical treatment.

Cure. It is occasionally cured by surgery. X-ray operates in a similar manner, destroying the diseased tissue.

Occurrence. It may occur on any part of the body, inside or out. Cancer of the mouth is much more prevalent among men than among women. This is attributed to men's use of tobacco, neglect of their teeth.

Mortality. The latest figures for the U. S. show that cancer ranks sixth among the leading causes of death. The death rate is 89.4 per 100,000, substantially that of nephritis, 90.1, and cerebral hemorrhage and softening of the brain, 90.4; all diseases of middle and advanced age.

At Bath. For further developments, the crowds that gathered outside the drab office of the staid Lancet, the similar crowds that would have gathered had the Lancet been located in Cleveland, Singapore, Budapest, Rome, Lyons, Tibet or Nome, Alaska--the entire medical profession, and the innumerable, tragic, grey-faced cohorts of the doomed--looked to Bath, England, where Dr. Gye will read a paper before the National Medical Association this week.