Abstract
The opinion prevails among investigators that resistance to growth of tumor can be induced only by treatment with tumor or normal tissue of the same animal species. In the course of a study on different phases of atreptic immunity, a series of experiments was undertaken with the aim in view to find the means whereby mouse tumor may be made to grow on a rat and vice versa. Ehrlich, in his so-called zig-zag transplantations, has shown that such a tumor of a mouse inoculated into a rat grows normally for eight or ten days and then ceases its growth and becomes absorbed. Our experiments consisted in the subcutaneous inoculation into a rat, of the normal skin and spleen tissue of a mouse followed in a few days by a subcutaneous inoculation of Ehrlich's sarcoma of a rat. The aim of this treatment was to accustom the tumor cells to mouse tissue, and then to see whether such a rat tumor, which may have obtained during its growth the food supplied by the inoculated normal mouse tissue, would not grow more readily when inoculated subsequently into a mouse. The results of this investigation were negative, but the extremely interesting fact was observed that a certain number of the rats treated with mouse tissue appeared immune against growth of the rat sarcoma. The following table will illustrate this phenomenon:
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