The search for infectious agents in the malignant tumors has passed through many curious phases. Nearly all the formations or bodies interpreted as the probable causes of these tumors have soon lost the significance at first put upon them. The various bacilli and cocci, the coccidia, the gregarinæ, the amebosporidia, the hematozoa have all suffered this fate.
Of late, Italian authors have urged that malignant tumors are caused by blastomycetes. The various peculiar bodies found in malignant tumors are regarded by them as blastomycetes, The coccidia and protozoa of previous writers were, according to Sanfelice and others, blastomycetes. The literature bearing on this, the latest phase of the search for the cause of sarcoma and carcinoma, has already reached gigantic proportions. The Italian investigators have published their articles in two or three scientific journals at the same time and in as many languages.
Strange to say, this new phase in