The Biological Treatment of Cancer'

It is the purpose of thif; paper to review critically some of the methods and results of the past two decades in cancer research, a branch of pathology which has not failed to share in the general progress of medicine. During this period innumerable experiments have been performed, and the most diverse materials employed, in an endeavor to solve the problem of the cure of cancer. Thus Bra has employed cultures of Nectria ditissima, a parasitic myxomycete occurrin,! in certain plants, and causing a disease resembling cancer in man. Cultures heated to 120" and filtered cause a febrile reaction in cancerous patients which is not found in healthy persons. Mongour and Gentes, employing this method, found that while the pain, the hemorrhage, and the discharge ceased, cure did not take place, and a similar result has been recorded by Parlavecchio. Bra later prepared an anticancerous vaccine from a parasite similar to that of plants, but obtained from human tumors. This vaccine, according to Silva and Vidal, caused a febrile reaction but no cures. Schmidt stated that Mucw racernosus is the causative agent of cancer, and that preparations of its cultures exert a therapeutic effect in cancer patients. He published the statement that he