directions into the
surrounding skin are his claws.

The singular thing is that, while brushing aside, of course, all these
grotesque similes, the most advanced researches of science are
developing more and more clearly the conception of the independent
individuality--as they term it, the _autonomy_--of cancer.

More and more decidedly are they drifting toward the unwelcome
conclusion that in cancer we have to deal with a process of revolt of a
part of the body against the remainder, "a rebellion of the cells," as
an eminent surgeon-philosopher terms it. Unwelcome, because a man's
worst foes are "they of his own household." Successful and even
invigorating warfare can be waged against enemies without, but a contest
with traitors within dulls the spear and paralyzes the arm. Against the
frankly foreign epidemic enemies of the race a sturdy and, of late
years, a highly successful battle has been fought. We have banished the
plague, drawn the teeth of smallpox, riddled the armor of diphtheria,
and robbed consumption of half its terrors. In spite of the ravings and
gallery-play of the Lombroso school anent "degeneracy," our bills of
mortality show a marked diminution in the fatality of almost every
important disease of external origin which afflicts humanity.

The world-riddle of pathology the past twenty years has been: Is cancer
due to the invasion of a parasite, a veritable microscopic crab, or is
it due to alterations in the communal relations, or, to speak
metaphorically, the allegiance of the cells? Disappointing as it may be,
the balance of proof and the opinion of the ablest and broadest-minded
experts are against the parasitic theory, so far, and becoming more
decidedly so. In other words, cancer appears to be an evil which the
body breeds within itself.

There is absolutely no adequate ground for the tone of lamentation and
the Cassandra-like prophecy which pervade all popular, and a
considerable part of medical, discussion of the race aspects of the
cancer problem. The reasoning of most of these Jeremiahs is something on
this wise: That, inasmuch as the deaths from cancer have apparently
nearly trebled in proportion to the population within the last thirty
years, it only needs a piece of paper and a pencil to be able to figure
out with absolute certainty that in a certain number of decades, at this
geometric ratio, there will be more deaths from cancer than there are
human beings living.

There could be no