The relation between ageing of the cells on the one hand and the development of carcinoma on the other hand is a subject of great interest. According to Karl Pearson’s[130] statistical enquiry the incidence of carcinoma reaches its maximum at the age of 46 years in women and 56 years in men; Lazarus-Barlow[131] concluded that the range of years over which cancer is likely to occur is practically the same in the two sexes, namely 46 to 64, and that among 4659 cases of malignant disease there were only 35, or 0·7 per cent, over 80 years of age.[132] The cancer age, therefore, coincides with the waning of maturity and the onset of old age; that carcinoma is rare in very old persons is also shown by the occurrence of one case only among 71 centenarians collected by Sir George Humphry. Laurent[133] considered that whereas longevity depends on a condition of vital equilibrium, the development of cancer is due to a want of this equilibrium, to a state of anarchy, and that the factors disposing to orderly vitality are conducive to longevity and antagonistic to the development of new growth. The reason why malignant growths are prone to appear with the onset of old age has naturally been the subject of much debate. According to Thiersch degeneration lessens the controlling influence normally exerted by connective tissue on epithelium, the inherent proliferative capacity of which then runs riot. Ribbert believed that from loss of resistance or diminution of surface tension in the connective tissues post-natal “rests” of epithelium were produced as the result of irritation and that these displaced cells then grew because there was no controlling opposition. Adami suggested a reversion of the highly specialized epithelial cells to a simpler form with powers of proliferation, the cumulative habit of growth taking the place of the habit of work, and practically anticipated the more modern view. According to Hastings Gilford[134] malignant disease is a premature cell senility and the result of the partial reversion of immature or adult cells to an embryonic or quasi-embryonic state. From a study of senescence in dogs Goodpasture[135] concludes that degenerative changes in the cells lead not only to death of some cells but to dedifferentiation of others, which, becoming simpler in structure and function, recover their juvenile power of growth in varying degrees, and that hence metaplasia and tumour growths occur as accidents of commencing old age. A little later Oertel[136] insisted on his view that cancer is not an embryonic reversion or a specific change in the cell but a phenomenon of senescence--a degenerative proliferation depending upon disturbances in the nucleus plasma relations, specifically upon the loss of nuclear chromosomes; from age or degeneration the tumour cell loses the higher functional chromosomes and retains the genetically older and more resistant ones controlling reproduction and vegetative activities; thus there arises a race of