Cancer Experiment

Report of what was probably the first effort to save the life of a cancerous human being by means of a new procedure appeared last week in the American Journal of Cancer. The patient, a woman dying from recurrent cancer of the breast, came to the attention of Dr. Mendel Jacobi of Brooklyn. Dr. Jacobi injected a small quantity of a solution under the skin of the woman's diseased armpit. That solution was a filtrate of Bacillus typhostis, the germ which causes typhoid fever. Twenty-four hours later Dr. Jacobi administered a second injection of the filtrate intravenously.

This procedure should have elicited the Shwartzman phenomenon, discovered by Dr. Gregory Shwartzman of Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital (TIME, June 25, 1934). In the Shwartzman phenomenon the skin swiftly ulcerates where the first bacterial filtrate is injected.

Dr. Jacobi had produced the Shwartzman phenomenon in cancerous rats. Their cancers had rotted. The decayed tissue had fallen off. And in many cases the site of the cancer had healed completely.

The woman into whom Dr. Jacobi injected the phenomenal double dose of typhous nitrate died four days after the treatment. But: "The tumor nodule was completely necrotic and virtually replaced by a hemorrhagic effusion," suggesting that, had she been treated earlier, she might have recovered.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.