Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/215

 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

��SEPTEMBER, 1916

��THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OP CANCER

Bt Db. LEO LOBB WASBIKOTON CNITSB8ITI lOIDICAI. SCHOOL

��w

��B may treat the subject of cancer from two points of view, namely, from that of the scientific investigator who studies it as a natural phenomenon and ascertains the laws of its origin and de- velopment, and from that of applied science, medicine, which is mainly concerned with the eradication of the disease. In the natural course of events, scientific analysis must precede the utilitarian attempts at control. I shall treat the subject of cancer purely from the viewpoint of scientific analysis. This analysis is not yet completed and on this occasion I shall endeavor to tell something of what science has dis- covered about cancer, following a study which really does not date much further back than twenty years.

Scientific investigation starts with the most obvious and gradually penetrates into the more remote. Experiences are the starting point for investigation ; experiences that call forth pain or pleasure, especially those that call forth pain, which do not fit into the rest of our life, which disturb its real or imagined harmony. In its origin, therefore, science is utilitarian. It is a direct struggle with the enemies of our peace of mind and of our body. Only gradually, through the greater maturity of our experiences, does reality become the object of our in- terests in this struggle with the emotions, and from now on we are no longer guided directly by them in our investigations, but the latter become transformed into a dispassionate search for the relations of facts. We seek to complete the picture of reality which at first was only a by-product of other efforts. This now becomes our real problem. The investigations have passed beyond the primitive, utilitarian stage. Eventually, however, this study of reality for its own sake leads to re- sults which again serve our utilitarian purposes better than a direct attack of the problems from a so-called ** practical ^^ point of view. Wireless telegraphy, diphtheria antitoxin, the eradication of yellow fever were possible only on the basis of purely scientific analysis, such as is carried on in the case of cancer research at the present day. The

VOL. m. — 15.

�� �