ABSTRACT
Some of us, young or long-memoried enough, may recall receiving the above teasing reply from the grown-up pestered by our oft-repeated question, ‘How big is it?’ A moment’s reflection showed us that the answer was unsatisfactory and our shrill questioning would soon begin afresh. Readers of the January issue of the Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology received a pleasant surprise in the form of an inset essay, On the Quantitative Study of Tumours, which shows that the clinical investigator, like the difficult adult, is still disinclined to give plain answers to plain questions. Rather than use a millimetre rule, he prefers a vital system; for ‘has he not around him countless convenient measures… from his own head, which is sometimes swelled, to the head of a pin … ?’ In the course of one paper the writer found tumours compared in size to ‘a walnut, a lentil, a pea, a large pea, a golf ball, a small hen’s egg and a pigeon’s egg’. Many of these obviously fall within the same unsatisfactory category as the piece of wood; and with the golf ball there is the added danger of describing it as large or small which ‘would inevitably lead, sooner or later, to friction between the Pathological Society of Great Britain and the Royal and Ancient Club, two bodies who, if never friendly, have up to now always lived in mutual forbearance’. For the oölogical method of measurement there is more to be said, though even this method is not free from objection. The range of size in eggs, from the ostrich’s on the one hand to the humming bird’s on the other is wide enough for all ordinary tastes and, when in doubt, there is always the cuckoo’s egg which apparently varies with the size of the egg of the foster-parent. Nevertheless there are large and small eggs in every species and it must be remembered that ‘a small hen’s egg’ is not necessarily small. The writer amusingly suggests that a standard egg might be kept in a strong room in the Houses of Parliament. We should prefer the National Institute of Medical Research.
