When Russell died at the age of 89 in 1940, the British Medical Journal published a large obituary noting that he was universally respected and embued with the dignity and highest ideals of his profession, and that he had served at one time as President of the Royal College of Physicians. No mention was made of his "parasites" or his "bodies", except to remark that "in his earlier years Russell devoted much time to the study of the cancer cell." Similarly, a large obituary appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal along with a full-page photo. His published books on Clinical Methods and widely read texts on circulation and gastro-intestinal diseases were cited, but not a word about his discovery in cancer.
The heresy of "the cancer microbe"
By the early part of the twentieth century the top cancer experts had all rejected so-called "cancer parasites" as the cause of cancer. The most influential physician to speak against it was James Ewing, an American pathologist and author of the widely-read textbook, Neoplastic Diseases. In 1919 Ewing wrote that "few competent observers consider it (the parasitic theory) as a possible explanation in cancer." According to Ewing and other authorities, cancer did not act like an infection. Therefore, microbes could not possibly cause cancer. He concluded, "The general facts of the genesis of tumors are strongly against the possibility of a parasitic origin."
As a result, the parasitic theory was totally discarded and few doctors dared to contradict Ewing's dogma by continuing to search for an infectious agent in cancer. Nevertheless, a few die-hard physicians remained convinced microbes were at the root cause of cancer and wrote about it convincingly in medical journals. The long history of this research is recorded in my book, The Cancer Microbe (1990) and anyone with internet access can do a Google search (type in "cancer microbe") and obtain a wealth of information on the microbiology of cancer. Another excellent history of cancer microbiology and the suppression of this controversial research is contained in David Hess' Can Bacteria Cause Cancer? (1997).
In the 1920s James Young, an obstetrician from Scotland, repeatedly grew pleomorphic (having many forms) bacteria from various cancers. The microbes had a "specific life cycle" and "spore stages" comprised of exceedingly tiny and barely visible spores. In the laboratory these tiny spores transformed into larger coccoid (round) forms, rod-forms and yeast-like forms (similar in size to Russell bodies). John Nuzum, a Chicago physician, reported a pleomorphic coccus he repeatedly isolated from breast cancer. The tiniest forms were virus-like and passed through a filter designed to hold back bacteria.
In 1925 Northwest Medicine published two papers by Michael Scott, a Montana surgeon who learned about the cancer microbe in TJ Glover's lab in 1921. Scott's microbe was similar to Young's. The parasite had a life cycle composed of three stages: a coccus, a rod, and a "spore sac" stage. Scott believed cancer was an infection like tuberculosis and attempted a vaccine treatment, but his treatment methods were quickly suppressed by the medical establishment.
In the 1930s in Germany the controversial Wilhelm von Brehmer described microbes in the blood of cancer patients, evoking the wrath of his scientific colleagues and prompting an intervention by Adolf Hitler. (See Proctor's The Nazi War on Cancer [1999]) Georges Mazet, a French physician, also found pleomorphic bacteria in Hodgkin's disease in 1941. Hodgkin's is a type of lymphoma cancer involving the lymphatic system. Mazet later reported similar acid-fast (red staining) bacteria in many different kinds of cancer, including leukemia.
In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, a quartet of women further refined the microbiology of cancer, emphasizing the extreme pleomorphism of the organism and its detection in tissue with the acid-fast stain. The published research of Virginia Livingston, Eleanor Alexander-Jackson, Irene Diller and Florence Seibert, is essential reading for the most updated understanding of the microbiology of cancer.
In the late 1970s Guido Tedeschi and other Italian microbiologists at the University of Camerino discovered "granules" in the red blood cells of healthy and ill people that turned out to be bacteria that could be cultured in the laboratory. Some of the staphylococcal and corynebacteria-like bacteria cultured from the red blood cells were acid-fast and cell wall-deficient, a staining and growth characteristic shared with the cancer microbe. This research has been confirmed by newer studies suggesting that bacteria reside in blood from healthy as well as sick individuals. These findings of tiny blood bacteria (nanobacteria) provide further evidence to support the theory that microbes can cause cancer.
Some other well-known scientists in the field of cancer microbiology include Gunther Enderlein, Royal Raymond Rife, Gaston Naessens and Wilhelm Reich. All have web sites devoted to their cancer research.
Russell bodies and their Origin
More than a century has passed since Russell's discovery and although electron microscopes (which have been used since the 1950s) have the ability to magnify objects tens of thousands of times, the significance and function of his bodies still remains unknown.
What is well-known is that Russell bodies can be found, not only in cancer, but in the majority of inflamed tissues throughout the body. Distinguishing large Russell bodies from actual fungal forms of Blastomyces can still be difficult, particularly when a pathologist encounters a true case of fungal infection due to Blastomyces.
In 1954 RG White, in "Observations on the formation and nature of Russell bodies", produced Russell bodies in animals by injecting them with different species of bacteria. He then studied the ensuing development of these bodies in the spleen, lymph nodes and plasma cells of the injected animals. Plasma cells are specialized forms of white blood cells that normally produce antibodies.
EM Schleicher, in his 1965 paper on "Giant Russell bodies", discusses the various theories of origin. Possibilities include origin from the lymphocyte, origin in plasma cells with later degeneration, origin from the mitochondria of cells, and even an origin from a red blood cell (erythrocyte) swallowed up by a plasma cell.
Most researchers currently believe Russell bodies are essentially immunoglobulins (proteins that acts as antibodies), but an electron microscopic study by SM Hsu et al. in 1981 has cast some doubt on this belief.
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