Part IV. The 20th century: the maelstrom of progress

«The last decades of the 19th century were occupied with the detailed study of the morphology of tumours, the separation of the varieties of disease, the elucidation of histogenesis and the writing of the natural history of malignant diseases. The twentieth century opens as the experimental era. . . . It seems likely to become noteworthy as the period of specific aetiological investigations which promise to widely separate many neoplastic diseases formerly held to be closely related. It may, thereby, prove to be the era of successful therapeutics and prophylaxis.»