50 Years Ago

Several oncogenic viruses have been known and studied for some years and it is therefore important to search for viruses as aetiological agents in human cancer ... A man 36 years old and of previous good health was referred to one of us ... with clinical evidence of hepatic malignancy. The presence of primary hepatoma had been confirmed at laparotomy. A liver biopsy specimen was obtained by means of a needle ...Histological examination showed the presence of poorly differentiated hepatocarcinoma ... In addition, particles were found in the cytoplasm of some 90 per cent of the eighty tumour cells examined ... Their size and shape indicate that these particles are viral in nature. It has recently been suggested, however, that particles seen as viruses under the electron microscope in various human leukaemia states may have been mycoplasma, small free living micro-organisms with many virus-like properties. The true nature of the particles we have seen must therefore await identification.

From Nature 19 November 1966

100 Years Ago

Judging from the correspondence which has recently appeared in NATURE, the dearth of wasps this autumn in many parts of England has been most pronounced ... I was staying, with my wife and son, in a cottage on Christon Hill, on the Mendip Hills ... we were simply besieged by wasps, which were particularly tiresome at the breakfast-table. They were so numerous at times ... that we frequently had to abandon our meals temporarily to punish the offenders, my son continuing his captures often for half an hour at a time ... I cannot recollect ever having seen so many wasps in a house, unless it was during the hottest part of 1911.

From Nature 16 November 1916 Footnote 1