THE GERM OF CANCER.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2795, 26 May 1911, Page 2

THE GERM OF CANCER.

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.

The experts ot the United States Agricultural Department claim to have made a very important discovery, and to have established beyond any reasonable doubt their contention that cancer is a germ disease. They declare they have found a cancer in plants " very similar to, perhaps identical, with that which afflicts humanity." It is, in tact, a malignant growth of exactly the same type, and the experts have succeeded m isolating the germ. Vast sums of money and many years of patient and laborious research have been devoted to the subject of cancer, but until now the sum total of our knowledge concerning the scourge amounts to practically very little. We know that cancer can be transplanted from man to the lower animals, and from one animal to another; also, that while the disease is not, strictly speaking, hereditary, certain families are more liable to it than others. It is known, also, that practically every living thing is liable to cancer, and that fish are peculiarly subject to it, so much so, indeed, that it was long contended that fish might possibly be the source of all cancers. Now it seems that the origin of cancer has been traced to the plant world, and it comes rather as a shock to learn that the germ of plant-cancer has actually been isolated from the common field-daisy, and is responsible for the well-known plant disease known as " crown gall," " black knob," "root tumour," and by other names, and which corresponds in all important respects to cancer in men and animals.. No germ has as yet been identified to account for cancer in human beings, and it is this tact that has led so many investigators to conclude that human cancer is not due to germs. The difficulty experienced in finding the specific germ that causes the disease is partly explained by the statement ot the experts that the parasite they have found in plant cancer is present in very minute quantities only, and is extremely difficult to isolate.