ther improbable that Tomatoes will engender
cancer, which is essentially a disease of vitiated blood, and of
degenerate cell tissue. Possibly the old exploded doctrine of
signatures may have suggested, or started this accusation against the
maligned, though unguarded Tomato: for it cannot be denied the
guileless fruit bears a nodulated tumour-like appearance, whilst
showing, when cut, an aspect of red raw morbid fleshy structure
strangely resembling cancerous disease.

Vegetarians who eat Tomatoes constantly and freely claim that
cancer is a disease almost unknown among their ranks; but an
Italian doctor writing from Rome gives it as the experience of
himself and his medical brethren that cancer is as common in Italy
and Sicily among vegetarians as with mixed eaters. Most of our
American cousins, who are the enterprising fathers of this medicinal
fruit, persuade themselves that they are never in perfect health
except during the Tomato season. And with us the ruddy Solanum
has obtained a wide popularity not simply at table as a tasty cooling
sallet, or an appetising stew, but essentially as a supposed
antibilious purifier of the blood. When uncooked it contains a
notable quantity of Solanin, and it would be dangerous to let
animals drink water in which the plant had been boiled. The Staff of
the Cancer Hospital at Brompton have emphatically declared "they
see no ground whatever for supposing that the eating of Tomatoes
predisposes to cancer."

Nevertheless some country people in the remote American States
attribute cancer to an excessively free use of the wild uncultivated
tomato as food.

[571] The first mention of this fruit by the London Horticultural
Society occurred in 1818.

Chemically in addition to the acids already named the Tomato
contains a volatile oil, a brown resinous extractive matter very
fragrant, a vegeto-mineral matter, muco-saccharin, some salts, and
in all probability an alkaloid. The whole plant smells unpleasantly,
and its juices when subjected to heat by the action of fire emit a
vapour so powerful as to provoke vertigo and vomiting.

The specific principles furnished by the Tomato will, when
concentrated, produce, if taken medicinally, effects very similar
to those brought about by taking mercurial salts, viz., an
ulcerative-state of the mouth, with a profuse flow of saliva, and
with excessive stimulation of the liver: peevishness also on the
following day, with a depressing backache in m