CANCER RESEARCH

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 73, 28 March 1933, Page 13

CANCER RESEARCH

NEW DIAGNOSIS METHOD

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, March 27.

A new pathological method of diagnosing the various types of cancer, which it is hoped will prove of great value in combating the malady, was described by Dr. E. S. Horning, a Fellow of the Eockefeller Foundation in the Medical Science Division of Sydney University. Dr. Horning, who has spent two years and a half in cancer research in the United States and Europe, including one year at tho Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, and in Britain, was a passenger by the Monterey on his return to Sydney. "While I was in the United States I worked under Dr. Cowdry, of Washington University, on an entirely new pathological method of cancer diagnosis," said Dr. Horning. "Under the ordinary pathological principle by which cancer is diagnosed under the microscope, the tissues are stained in the usual way. We have been incinerating the tissues. The great advantage of this procedure is that after'incineration we find that the various types of cancer differ from each other in their inorganic structure. One hopes, therefore, that tho new technique will be of great value as a diagnostic method. "We know that in the causes of cancer there are two factors—the irritant factor and tho unstable chemical factor," Dr. Horning continued. "It seems to me that cancers may have an internal secretion of their own, such as glands have, and that- the unstable chemical factor might, therefore, be associated with the possible secretion of an internal malignant growth into the blood stream. That is .just,an idea of mine. Wo have known for some time that cancer is not infectious, and experiments, including tests with mice tend to show that it is not hereditary." Commenting upon sunburn as a cause of cancer, Dr. Horning said only fair people as a rule were subject to cancer caused by sunburn as an irritant factor.