Malignant Disease—2

Abstract

In many ways cancer is as complex and ill defined a concept as old age itself. Probably no two tumours ever show the same clinical and histological pattern, and there is enough on record to make one equally confident that adequate biochemical (especially enzymological), immunological and ultrastructural study of tumour cells in culture would show an equal diversity. The one great regularity to be observed in cancer is the consistency of its age-specific incidence curve, with its typical association in all species with the period of senescence. It is almost solely with this association that I am concerned, but, if it is to be understood, the other general aspects of malignant disease must be looked at in sequence.