The thesis of this work may be briefly summarized. In many instances a malignant prostatic tumor is an overgrowth of adult epithelial cells. All known types of adult prostatic epithelium undergo atrophy when androgenic hormones are greatly reduced in amount or inactivated. In this paper evidence is presented that significant improvement often occurs in the clinical condition of patients with far advanced cancer of the prostate after they have been subjected to castration. Conversely, the symptoms are aggravated when androgens are injected. We believe that this work provides a new concept of prostatic carcinoma.
The evidence that prostatic carcinoma is often composed of an adult type of epithelium derives from a study of such tissue with respect to the phosphatase which manifests optimum activity at pH 5. An important advance in the technic of investigation of the prostate gland was made by Kutscher and Wolbergs,1 who found that