Stephen Paget (1855-1926) was an English surgeon known for proposing the "seed and soil" theory of metastasis. He was the son of the distinguished surgeon and pathologist Sir James Paget.

His observations of metastasis were published in 1889 in The Lancet. He argued that the patterns of spread of cancer were due to the "dependence of the seed cancer cell on the soil secondary organ." These observations stem from the finding that e.g. breast cancer tends to metastasize to liver, brain, and lungs, while e.g. prostate cancer tends to spread only to bone.

References

• Paget, S. (1889). The distribution of secondary growths in cancer of the breast. The Lancet, 1, 571-573.

British surgeons | 1855 births | 1926 deaths

Stephen Paget