The Forgotten Clue To
The Bacterial Cause Of Cancer
© 2003, by Alan Cantwell, Jr. M.D.
11-17-3
The twentieth century was indeed the century of Modern Medicine with tremendous strides made in the understanding and control of infectious diseases, as well as the introduction of life-saving antibiotics and vaccines. Unfortunately, along with these advances came the perils of genetic engineering, the increasing threat of newly emerging viruses, biowarfare, and bioterrorism
Despite these scientific achievements, the cause of cancer remains a mystery. Scientists suspect genetic susceptibility, possible cancer-causing viruses, and environmental factors might play a role in some cancers, but none of these factors explain why millions of people die yearly from a variety of malignancies.
How could scientists put men on the moon, but remain so ignorant about cancer and its origin? How can the infectious causes of tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis, smallpox, polio, malaria, and other viral and bacterial and parasitic diseases be understood, but the cause of cancer be unknown? Could the cause of cancer conceivably be an infectious agent that has been overlooked, ignored, or unrecognized by medical doctors in the twentieth century? Could the germ of cancer be hidden in the Russell body? - a large microscopic form known to every pathologist for over a century!
William Russell (1852-1940) and "the parasite of cancer"
On December 3, 1890 William Russell, a pathologist in the School of Medicine at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, gave an address to the Pathological Society of London in which he outlined his histopathologic findings of "a characteristic organism of cancer" that he observed microscopically in fuchsine-stained tissue sections from all forms of cancer that he examined, as well as in certain cases of tuberculosis, syphilis and skin infection.
The parasite was seen within the tissue cells (intracellular) and outside the cells (extracellular). The size of Russell's parasite ranged from barely visible, up to "half again as large as a red blood corpuscle." The largest round forms were easily seen microscopically. The large size of some of these bodies suggested a fungal or yeast-like parasite. Russell provisionally classified the parasite as a possible "blastomycete" (a type of fungus); and called the forms "fuchsine bodies" because of their bluish-red staining qualities.
Microbiology was still in its infancy in Russell's era, and it was generally thought that each microbe could only give rise to a single disease. Thus, the idea of a cancer germ (especially one that could also be identified in TB and syphilis) was received cautiously. Nine years later in 1899, in yet another report on "The parasite of cancer" appearing in The Lancet (April 29), Russell admitted that finding cancer parasites in diseases other than cancer was indeed a "stumbling block." By this time a considerable number of scientists concluded that Russell bodies were merely the result of cellular degeneration of one kind or another. Furthermore, no consistent microbe was cultured from tumors; and the inoculation of these microbes into animals produced conflicting and often negative results.
Russell was trained as a pathologist, not as a microbiologist, and he avoided getting into the bacteriologic controversies regarding various microbes grown from cancer. He simply concluded, "It seems almost needless to add that there remains abundant work to be done in this important and attractive field."
After three years' work at the New York State Pathological Laboratory of the University of Buffalo, Harvey Gaylord confirmed Russell's research in a 36 page report titled "The protozoon of cancer", published in May, 1901, in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. Gaylord found the small forms and the large sacs characteristic of Russell bodies in every cancer he examined. Some large spherical bodies were four times the diameter of a leukocyte (white blood cell). Red blood cells measure about 7 micron in diameter and leukocytes are 2 to 3 times larger than red blood cells. Thus, some of the bodies that Gaylord observed attained the amazing size of around 50 micron in diameter. In addition, he found evidence of internal segmentation within the larger bodies "after the manner recognized in malarial parasites." The tiniest forms appeared the size of ordinary staphylococci.
Russell's 1899 paper ended his writings of a cancer parasite, but his discovery quickly became known to pathologists as Russell bodies. These bodies continue to fascinate researchers and physicians (like myself) up to the present time
(cancer), magnified 1000 times. Gram's stain, magnified 1000 times.