Plantes Médicinales & Aromatiques
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The Plant Kingdom Featured Significantly in the History of Cancer

Wilson Onuigbo

A decade elapsed between 1947, when the author sat for a degree in Botany, and 1957, when he did likewise in Medicine. The latter year was fruitful in that during it he wrote his first paper which it was based on 1000 cases of lung cancer. This included the expressive plant kingdom phrase, “suitable nidus” with reference to the survival of transported human cancer cells. Therefore, it is instructive to now document in the prestigious Journal of Plant Studies how the long history of cancer was nicely interwoven with the plant kingdom. In particular, size was described with ready references to apple, apricot, cherry, chestnut, cocoa-nut, currant, filbert, garden pea, grape stone, hazel-nut, hemp, hemp-seed, millet, mustard seed, nut, oat, orange, pea, pear, split pea, thistle-down and wall nut. Moreover, branching and grafting appeared. So did fungus which is no longer in use. More importantly, seed and soil were brought in readily cancer cells being said to find roots both at the starting point and at the resting place. Moreover, prevention of cancer was compared with not allowing blight to become pestilential. Thus, surgical treatment was recommended in terms of early complete uprooting. In all probability, just as a Japanese group demonstrated that mimosine, an allelochemical amino acid, inhibited “the growth of lettuce prototoplasts at the stage of colony formation,” even so there is the human similitude named personally as the “Erythrocyte Associated Necrosis Factor” which is likely to turn out to be the micromolecule capable of being used in the war against human cancer colony formation. In conclusion, therefore, recondite researches in the translational laboratories should soon lead to that breakthrough which could conduce to cancer cure.