Cancer

This term refers to a malignant overgrowth of cells, which continue to divide and multiply completely unchecked within the body, usually ultimately consuming the other normal cells and thereby killing the patient. Cancers arise from the cells of one organ or tissue and the cancer is then said to have arisen from that tissue. However, the cells tend to shed off and spread to other sites in the body by the blood or lymphatic systems in particular, and then these secondary seedlings (also called metastases) grow at these new body sites to damage the normal tissue at these sites also.