Stephen Paget

Stephen Paget (1855 to 1926) was an English surgeon and pro-vivisection campaigner, the fifth child and fourth son of the surgeon and pathologist Sir James Paget. Born in Cavendish Square, London, he was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford, trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1885. He served as surgeon at the Metropolitan Hospital and the West London Hospital and in the throat and ear department at Middlesex Hospital. He is long credited with the seed and soil theory of metastasis, which holds that the spread of cancer is not coincidental but reflects the microenvironment of the secondary site, though in his own paper on secondary growths in breast cancer he names Ernst Fuchs as the chief advocate of the underlying idea. After retiring from practice in 1910 he devoted much time to defending animal experiments as secretary of the Research Defence Society, and he also wrote a book on Louis Pasteur and a critical study of Christian Science.