ustified the concept. The
surgeon had expected to find a hard carcinoma.

"And it came to me suddenly that _he had found his cancer_!

"My interpolation was this: Mankind is suffering an evolutionary
change in his reproductive procedure. The high incidence of various
tumors evidences Nature's experiments in developing a asexual
reproduction."

* * * * *

Sansome's statement so flabbergasted me that I looked at him for signs
of facetiousness or irrationality. His extreme fatigue was
evident--but his calmness and clarity of self-expression in a foreign
language indicated no mental confusion. A hoax of such magnitude was
outside the realm of possibility for a surgeon of his distinction.

The man was simply following a blind alley of reasoning, set off by
his life-long frustration of battling cancer.

I mustered my patience and drew him out, hoping he would find a
contradiction in his own theory.

"This is a rather staggering notion, Dr. Sansome," I said. "Have you
been able to support it with--additional evidence?"

"Until Miss Caffey," he said, "frankly, no. Not the kind of evidence
that is acceptable. But the theory has much to defend it. In your own
Journal of the A. M. A., May 7, 1932, Dr. Maud Slye published the
first solid evidence that predisposition to so-called malignant tumor
is hereditary. Is this not a better characteristic of a true mutation,
rather than of a disease?"

"Perhaps," I said. "But how does Mother Nature justify the
desirability of a change from our present rather successful bisexual
system? And isn't she being rather cruel in her methods? Think of the
millions she has made suffer in her experiments."

"Mother Nature," Sansome pronounced positively, "is neither kind nor
cruel. She is manifestly indifferent to all but the goal of survival
of the species. Our civilization has set out to thwart her with
increasingly more effective methods of birth-control. In the light of
survival, Nature is most justified in trying to bring millions of
frustrated, childless humans to parenthood.

* * * * *

"Meanwhile," he said, riffling the case history of Sara Caffey, "let
us examine the evidence at hand. Our patient arrived in Paris
positively cancerous. After confirming the diagnosis, I proposed an
unprecedented treatment based on my theory. We know several body
conditions which promote the rapid development of carcinoma, such as
excess