Updated
UPDATE NOTE #1: The cause and cure of cancer was published by John Beard in 1902. Beard’s studies have continually been ignored or attacked by orthodox medicine in spite of the fact that his theory has been clinically demonstrated to be correct over and over again throughout history. Beard actually discovered stem cells at the turn of the century. He called them trophoblasts. All trophoblast cells originate in the yolk sac and have to migrate into, and throughout, the growing embryo – when a stem cell loses its power to differentiate into the cell type of its parent tissue it becomes cancerous and grows out of control.
UPDATE NOTE #2: If you heard that the Kelley enzymes were “burning people up” and were too strong, here is the situation. Sometime in the near past, Dr Kelley decided to double the amount of glandulars in the pancreatic enzymes. This caused problems, probably due to the amount of protomorphogens [PMGs] they contained. Protomorphogens are the blueprints for the new cells. Since they are mineral containing proteins, they initiate antibody responses if they spill over into the intercellular spaces or blood stream [e.g, in trauma or degenerative disease processes]. If tissue breakdown exceeds tissue repair, these PMGs interfere with recovery since histamine is released when they hook up with antibodies [Royal Lee originally called these, Natural Tissue Antibodies]. Antibodies surrounding sick and diseased tissue stifle growth and repair [demonstrated in the chicken heart and many other experiments during the early 19th and 20th century]. When body organs are diseased, such as in rheumatic heart disease, PMGs often effect recovery by clearing out the antibodies collecting around damaged cells that are releasing the protein contents. The PMGs prepared from animal tissue link up with the troublemaking antibodies and carry them off, allowing the cell breathing space in which to repair or reproduce. When the protomorphogen hooks up with the antibody to clear it away to make room for healthy tissue growth, histamine is released. This can cause sharp pains, dull aches, feeling of impending cold onset, flu type symptoms or just plain sick syndrome, depending upon the amounts of PMGs taken in. PMGs are prepared from glandulars. If the heart is being attacked, beef heart PMG is fed. If the Liver is in need of repair, Liver PMG is fed. Stories abound about heart patients who were kept alive by eating pounds of fresh beef heart over a hundred years ago. This type of medical information was swept under the rug by medical criminals and medical students were denied access to such information because these items could not be patented by the drug companies. High levels of PMGs in the Kelley pancreatic enzymes were probably the result of his use of increased amounts of glandulars. According to my reporting source, the pancreatic enzyme effect of the Kelley enzymes are claimed to be higher than all the others on the market for which assays are available for comparison. It is my personal opinion that all of the enzymes being marketed by reputable companies are OK for use. The most comprehensive explanation of protomorphogen is found in Dr Royal Lee’s work, Protomorphology, The Principles of Cell Regulation.
UPDATE NOTE #3: Dr William Donald Kelley passed away on
1. CANCER DEFINITION AND DISCUSSION –
2. LEARN ABOUT THE AMAZING EFFECT OF BLOOD
ROOT SALVE IN DRAWING TUMORS
OUT OF THE BODY THROUGH THE SKIN. THE EFFECT OF BLOOD ROOT DEFIES ALL
SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT AND PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION. BRAIN TUMORS HAVE BEEN DRAWN DOWN
THROUGH THE LYMPHATICS AND THEN OUT THROUGH THE SKIN ON THE BACK OF THE
NECK. I HAVE PERSONALLY WITNESSED
THE POWERFUL EFFECTS OF BLOOD ROOT SALVE DRAWING TUMORS OUT OF THE
BREAST.
3. WARNING AGAINST THE USE OF ABORTION PILL
RSU-486.
4. PSA TEST, THE GREAT MEDICAL SCAM OF THE
80s
5. THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER AND ITS
SCIENTIFIC BASIS BY JOHN BEARD ,
1911 [this is Beard’s original book].
1.
WHAT IS
CANCER?
Diabetes is the inability of the body to metabolize properly,
sugars and carbohydrates. Cancer is nothing more than the very simple inability
of the body to metabolize proteins properly. And that's all cancer is. William
Donald Kelley, DDS
[note: William Donald Kelley
passed away on
Until the reader understands
what cancer is, they will be unsuccessful in applying the proper
treatment.
The commonly held view of
cancer is incorrect. Cancer is not a tumor, metastasis or blood or lymph
invasion.
A malignant tumor is a SIGN
of cancer, a SYMPTOM of cancer, a malignant tumor is NOT
cancer.
Cancer is the inability of
the body to metabolize proteins due to a lack of pancreatic enzymes. It is the
pancreatic enzyme that digests the cancer cell. Pancreatic enzymes will attack
and digest any cell foreign to the body but will not harm normal body cells.
Pancreatic enzymes taken by mouth escape digestion and are absorbed intact into
the system. The enzymes have survived boiling in hydrochloric acid at a
temperature of several hundred degrees. Pig enzymes are most similar to humans
and are the preferred source by some doctors. Beef enzymes are a close second.
Cancer is a failure of the
pancreas to produce enough pancreatic enzymes to keep the daily growth of
trophoblast cells in the body under control. All trophobasts originate in the
yolk sac. They are now called STEM CELLS.
It appears as though the
pancreatic enzyme is the ONLY bodily defense against the growth of malignant
tumors arising out of the trophoblasts/stem cells scattered throughout the body.
Other apparent cures are probably the result of the facilitation [by the
supposed curative substance or procedure] of the pancreatic enzymes to do their
job in digesting cancer cells.
Everyone grows malignant
tumors in their bodies every day. Trophoblast Cells designed to form the
placenta in every pregnancy are found scattered all throughout the body and when
triggered into reproducing, begin to form malignant tumors.
Pancreatic enzymes “sniff
out” these incipient tumors and digest them. Pancreatic enzymes do not attack
and digest normal body cells.
This is why the fetal
pancreas turns on so early in gestation. It helps digest the trophoblast cells
of pregnancy which eat into the uterine lining to “prepare the bed” for the
embryo. Those trophoblast cells are the same cells that form malignant
tumors.
The true cause of cancer was
announced in 1902 and published in 1911.
It was later described as The Unitarian Trophoblastic Theory of
Cancer.
The cause of cancer has been
steadfastly ignored by mainstream medicine for an entire century because the
cure has nothing to do with medicine nor drugs, nor heroic or mystifying
procedures. Millions and millions of people have suffered and died unnecessarily
because of criminal interference by organized medicine and the pharmaceutical
industry, aided and abetted by government bureaucrats and the alphabet soup of
bureaucracies, in particular, the NIH, CDC and FDA.
xxx
If you are growing tumors
and have been told you have cancer – unless you have the cancer of pregnancy
[80-90% of which respond to orthodox drug treatments with Methotrexate etc.]
your best chance for recovery is to begin pancreatic enzyme therapy and follow
the protocol developed by Dr William Donald Kelley, the
The more affluent patient
should contact Dr Nicholas Gonzalez of NYC. Initial fee $2800 with appointments
scheduled at six month intervals costing $650 initially.
In reviewing the different
approaches to cancer in alternative medicine one must keep in mind that anything
that facilitates the effectiveness of pancreatic enzymes in the body will appear
to be a cancer cure. For example, a
sympathetic dominant, overly acid cancer patient with solid tumors who engages
in a vegetarian based diet cure for cancer might achieve enough pH balance to
increase the effectiveness of their pancreas and recover. On the other hand, a
parasympathetic dominant cancer victim with lymphomas and blood related cancers
might be able to effect the same result by resorting to an entirely different,
meat based diet. The latter patient who tries to go vegetarian and eats lots of
green salads etc. thinking that is the healthy thing to do will make matters
worse.
Orthodox medicine attacks
malignant tumors with poisonous drugs which add to the poisons that result from
the tumor breakdown. This often overwhelms the system and the patient dies from
the toxins released by the tumor breakdown plus the drug effects, plus their
basic malnourished state and junk food diet. In my opinion, most cancer patients
die from the medical treatment long before they would die of their cancers.
When using the proper
therapy [pancreatic enzymes plus vitamins, minerals and essential food factors],
the patient only has to contend with the poisons from the tumor breakdown.
Coffee enemas that stimulate the liver help this process along and help the body
to rid itself of toxins. The coffee enema was a standard in medical care for
over seventy years and was used to rescue patients from toxic shock syndrome. It
was originally used for pain relief during the Crimean war when supplies of
painkilling drugs were exhausted. I have just been informed by Dr Kelley’s son
that Pam MacDougall, a long time Kelley colleague uses infrared sauna for
eliminating detoxification effects. As soon as I gather the material on this I
will add it to this discussion.
Patients have to stop
pancreatic enzymes [and their other nutritional supplements] for periods of time
to enable their liver to clean out the toxins. Presently, patients stay on the
protocol for up to 15 to 20 days and then rest for five days to enable to the
system to cleanse itself of the toxic tumor breakdown products.
During the five day
abstention from the vitamins and enzymes of the protocol - purges, liver flushes
and “clean sweep” techniques are used to help clean out the
body.
The bigger the dose of
pancreatic enzyme the greater the destruction of the tumor
masses.
The greater the destruction
of the tumor mass the worse the patient feels.
If you are treating yourself
for cancer with pancreatic enzymes and don’t feel bad, one of three
possibilities exist:
1. you are not taking enough
enzymes
2. your tumors are very
small
3. something is blocking the
effect of the pancreatic enzymes.
This latter point is one of
the most important guidelines for the recovering cancer
patient.
SUGGESTED READING ON CANCER
added Jan 24, 2004
1. John Beard’s reprint
advertised on this website.
2. The Immortal Cell by Gerald
B Dermer who spent half his adult life as a cancer researcher. He describes
cancer research as, “…a scientific and medical scandal of the highest order...a
tale of poor science and the pressures that induce cancer scientists to do
unsound work.”
3. A New Approach to the
Conquest of Cancer, Rheumatic and Heart Diseases by Howard H Beard, PhD [no
relation to John Beard] Note: I listened to Dr Beard lecture in 1973. He claimed
that he had some tumors growing in his bowels and when they got too big he just
stopped the donuts and took some pancreatic enzymes. He told this story in a
humorous, joking manner when asked about his personal diet but it was my opinion
that he was serious about the tumors in his bowel. Howard Beard recommended the
urine pregnancy test as a cancer diagnosis since anyone with HcG in their urine
had to be pregnant or have cancer. Back in those days we were doing pregnancy
tests on males to help diagnose cancer – everyone thought we were
crazy.
4.
One Answer to Cancer By Dr
William Donald Kelley. Dr Kelley explains why no one can cure your cancer and
that you have to do it yourself. He gives you the guidelines to accomplish the
task. It helps to have someone knowledge to help you along the way. The
nutritional treatment of cancer is a full time job and the patients need lots of
help. For example, using the Gonzalez enzymes require up to 96 capsules of
pancreatic enzymes a day in six divided doses with one dose between two and four
AM at a time when the body is most alkaline. Pancreatic enzymes work in an
alkaline environment.
Dr Duffy’s advice to
CANCER patients and
ANYONE INTERESTED IN THEIR HEALTH WHO WOULD LIKE TO KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO EAT
ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN PERSONAL METABOLIC TYPE OR WHO WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW TO
CURE THEIR CANCER AT HOME:
College Health
Store
410
Lution
78087
Tel 1-888-477-3618 toll free from within
the
Ask for the nutritional catalog that
contains the pancreatic enzymes and other nutritional items necessary to comply
with the Kelley cancer treatment protocol. ALSO ASK FOR A COPY OF THE
NUTRITIONAL PROTOCOL FOR YOU TO FOLLOW.
The remarks herein
are also supported by the study published in the peer reviewed journal,
Nutrition and Cancer vol. 33, no.2, 1999 (June). The question of the
effectiveness of ORAL pancreatic enzymes was finally settled and reported in
1965 in the J of Exp Med. Initially, investigators thought that pancreatic
enzymes could not survive digestion and exert their effects on cancer cells
after being absorbed through the digestive system. This was found to be untrue.
Pancreatic enzymes survive the digestive process and then go about their
business of digesting cancer cells – regardless of their location. This was
demonstrated on a strain of lab mice that routinely develop and die of cancer
within six months. When these mice
were placed on pancreatic enzymes, 100% of them survived and lived out normal
lifespans! – 100& of the controls, fed the usual rations, died of cancer as
usual.
This article should also serve to expose
the chicanery of Chris Wallace with his latest ABC “Primetime” show (Jan 2002);
the criminal activity of the major news networks; the curious activity of
Stephen Barrett, known as the chief “quackbuster” for organized medicine; the
destructive and misleading activities of Tony Fauci and gang at the CDC/NIH; and
all the medical quacks practicing orthodox medicine and those churning out
useless, junk-science based “scientific” papers at the public’s expense. This
latter group was properly exposed by Gerald B. Dermer, a cancer researcher who
spent a good part of his life doing cancer research and then dropped out to
expose it as a colossal fraud. Read his book, The Immortal Cell: Why Cancer
Reseach Fails.
Any MD with common sense and the power to think for him/her self who has practiced orthodox medicine five or more years eventually realizes that they’re doing more harm than good. Some of them then begin to look around for a less harmful approach – often ending up in non therapeutic activities such as radiology, psychiatry etc. I have been told this over and over by MDs I have met over the years.
In 1973, this writer taught a seminar on
the Kelley nutritional treatment of cancer to a group of Chiropractors in
Tallmadge, Ohio, at which time I was called a quack by some of my colleagues and
threatened with de-licensing etc. The techniques that I taught at that seminar,
while based upon the fundamental idea of John Beard as interpreted by Dr Kelley,
have been perfected over the years by Dr Kelley and Dr Gonzalez and now
represent statistically, by peer reviewed study, the best approach available for
the cancer patient. This is regardless of the type or location of the cancer
with the possible exception of the cancer of pregnancy.
A case by case approach based upon
biochemical individuality is now being used by Nicholas Gonzalez MD, in NYC and
others. Effective biochemical and other forms of screening, individualized
diets, physical examinations, nutrient supplementation and special
detoxification techniques have now been formulated into the best approach to
cancer in history. The treatment of cancer is now highly successful.
The established protocols have been
demonstrably successful with pancreatic cancer. Gonzalez in NYC has published
the results of the effectiveness of the nutritional approach to cancer which far
exceeds anything available in the orthodox approach in most cancers [see
choriocarcinoma below].
Julius Cohnheim (1839-1884) described the
embryonal rest theory,
surmising that when the embryo is formed, an excess of germ cells are formed
which later, subjected to certain environmental stimuli, can multiply out of
control. The result would be cancer if it were not for [as later discovered by
John Beard] a properly functioning pancreas producing the enzymes necessary to
keep such growths under control.
These germ cells, called trophoblasts by
John Beard are none other than the STEM CELL of modern research. They originate
in the yolk sac and migrate to all sections of the body where they become the
“seeds” for future tissue growth depending upon their location.
Cohnheim’s idea had to wait for the Scot,
John Beard to figure out the connection between the pancreas and cancer. Beard
observed that the developing embryo is immediately surrounded by a layer of
trophoblasts which eat into the lining to prepare a nest for the developing egg
where they continue to multiply until the day the fetal pancreas turns on.
Trophoblasts are wild and wooly cells, primitive and undifferentiated parts of
the placenta and if unchecked by pancreatic enzymes, become the most rapidly
destructive cancer, choriocarcinoma.
Orthodox drug therapy is effective in 80-90% of choriocarcinoma via the
use of Methotrexate and other drugs [Dr Gonzalez, pers
comm.].
At a certain time in the development of the
embryo, the seemingly unchecked growth of these cells would abruptly stop at a
specific day in every species observed by Beard. This led to his theory that
perhaps the use pancreatic enzymes would be effective in the treatment of cancer
since it was these very pancreatic enzymes that digested and eliminated the
potentially cancer forming trophoblasts of pregnancy.
Beard gave us the answer to the DIRECT
cause of cancer – it has been kept out of sight, ridiculed and ostracized by
organized medicine ever since he reported his findings in 1902 (Lancet 1:1758)
in an article entitled The Trophoblastic Theory of Cancer.
In 1911 Beard published a book, “The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer” and
shortly thereafter, forty clinics in
hCG is the molecule used in pregnancy tests
to establish pregnancy. hCG also indicates the presence of malignant cells. hCG
in the urine indicates one of three possibilities: a pregnant female, a male
with cancer, or an un-pregnant female with cancer.
HCG is a negatively charged glycoprotein
hormone (a “sialoglyocprotein”). Howard Beard developed the “Anthrone” urine
test to detect hCG in the urine as a specific pathognomonic sign of cancer
except in the pregnant female. The pharmaceutically supported establishment
criminals in government bureacracies have managed to keep this information under
the rug until 1992 when Acevedo’s research was finally published in the
establishment mouthpiece for cancer, the journal Cancer 1992;69:1818-28 and
1829-42 finally published the truth along with Cancer Det Prev 1995;19:37. The
chief investigator said, “hCG, the hormone of pregnancy…is a common phenotypic
characteristic of cancer.”
In another study The Michigan State
Department of Biomechanics reported 96% effectiveness in the Furda Biochemical
analysis ability to predict cancer based on protein electrophoresis analysis.
(pers comm. H.Eidenier Jr). In 1994 Krichevsky reported that ALL cancer cells
express hCG in all its forms including the related human luteinizing hormone
(Endocrin 1994;135:1034-39).
So the truth is finally out officially. In
1942 Ernst T. Krebs Jr rediscovered Beard’s thesis and history and in July 1950
they published an article in the Medical Record entitled, “The Unitarian
Trophoblastic Thesis of Cancer.” Krebs stated, “cancer is trophoblast in special
and temporal anomaly, hybridized with, and vasularized by, hostal or somatic
cells and in irreversible and fiercely malignant antithesis to such.” (Townsend
Letter Feb/Mar 1993 p175).
Krebs co-discovered Laetrile (Vitamin B17),
found especially in apricot kernels. Vigorous nutritional therapy has been
responsible for deaths attributed to too rapid breakdown of tumors that release
overwhelming toxins into the body. Underactivity of the Liver would contribute
to such deaths and this is the reason for the insistence on the use of coffee
enemas on a daily basis by patients on the nutritional cure of cancer to insure
Liver breakdown of the highly toxic products of tumor breakdown.
Dr Kelley cured himself of pancreatic
cancer by simple, natural means. Although his approach was only about thirty per
cent effective in the very beginning because he used a strictly vegetarian
approach, he quickly found out that other methods had to be brought into the
equation.
Kelley had the will to perform the
thousands of painstaking studies on the effects of the various vitamins,
minerals and essential food factors necessary to figure out an effective
protocol for all the metabolic types. The Kelley approach is being successfully
used by Gonzalez in NYC [greatly improved as new products are discovered and
developed]. The protocol is practically a guaranteed success for those who use
it properly. [Any patient who has been given six months to live stands a good
chance of full recovery]
The nutritional treatment of cancer is
based upon John Beard’s trophoblastic theory of cancer which includes the use of
pancreatic enzymes and detoxifying methods including the liver flush and coffee
enema. The use of detoxifying methods are absolutely essential in all cancer
patients and is lifesaving in some due to the enormous amount of toxins released
from tumor break-down. Many cancer patients thought to be dying of cancer drug
effects are in fact dying from the poisonous products of tumor breakdown. If
that is not detoxified by coffee enemas and liver flushes, the patient will
often die even though the signs of cancer [tumors] are disappearing in their
body.
Basically the nutritional approach to
cancer involves the use of large amounts of pancreatic enzymes, diet tailored to
the individual biochemical needs of the patient and the rigorous use of the
coffee enema, liver flushes, special detoxification techniques and purges.
The quackbusters who have been ridiculing
the coffee enema are referred to the Merck Manual from 1898 to 1977. Coffee
enema is recommended in that prestigious medical manual.
Medical literature reveals that coffee
enemas have been used in hospital emergency situations for conditions as serious
as septic shock and was first used by nurses in the days of
The treatment of cancer is a do-it-at-home
approach and is a full time job. Minimum enemas per day is usually two and some
patients require as many as six to eight. Coffee enemas using strictly fresh
ground ORGANIC coffee are necessary along with the consumption of as many as 180
vitamin tablets per day depending upon the severity of the situation. Cost is
estimated at one twentieth of the cost of orthodox medical treatment, most of
the latter of which ends up killing the patient. Hardly anyone dies of cancer
these days, most people die from the medical treatment.
One thing is certain, the NUTRITIONAL, NATURAL cure for cancer is available. Those in government positions who continue to support the drug oriented orthodox medical approach to cancer while suppressing information vital to the public health and welfare should be identified and brought before a jury and tried for crimes against humanity in accordance with the principles laid down at Nuremberg. There is no question in my mind that if this were accomplished properly, many of the leading figures in our government bureacracies today would be found guilty of villainous acts against the public good.
The number of people victimized by the Nazi medical crimes
pale in comparison to the numbers of innocent victims in the USA today who are
dying from medical quackery being rendered by doctors practicing orthodox
medicine. This is particularly true in regards to those being treated by the
deadly drugs used for AIDS, a myth similar to fictional epidemic [SMON] in
The situation is totally out of control and has now reached mind boggling proportions.
The makers of Bayer Aspirin just admitted to killing over
80 Americans with a useless cholesterol drug being commercialized to improperly
influence the elderly who do better with higher cholesterol levels!
Every member of the orthodox medical fraternity and every
person who benefits from tax supported medical research resulting in the
propagation of destructive propaganda from orthodox medicine are equally guilty.
These co-conspirators should be brought to trial and tried under principles laid
down at
The NIH and the CDC especially, are a plague on humankind
and causing more deaths, ill health, maiming, and unnecessary business losses
[Mad cow, Hoof and Mouth insanity etc], than all of the wars of history and will
continue to do so until a public consciousness is awakened and proper actions as
suggested herein are put into effect.
REPEAT
ADVICE…….
Dr Duffy’s advice to
cancer patients and ANYONE INTERESTED IN THEIR HEALTH WHO WOULD LIKE TO KNOW
EXACTLY HOW TO EAT ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN PERSONAL METABOLIC TYPE:
1. Cancer patients
call Kelley’s health food store in
College Health
Store
410
Lution
78087
Tel 1-888-477-3618
toll free from within the
2. Call 1-888-477-3618 toll free and order
Dr Kelley’s SELF TEST and take it from there, he will recommend the specific
nutrition for each metabolic type after you complete the comprehensive (2 to 3
hours) questionnaire - cost is only $19.95 for the SELF TEST. [call
1-817-594-0705 if you are out of the country]
3. Dr Kelley recommends the Navarro urine
test to diagnose the presence of cancer. The telephone number for the Navarro
clinic, [long distance to the Philipines] is 011-632-714-7442 or 847-359-3634.
Also call
4. If you are not a do-it-yourselfer call
Dr Gonzalez in NYC 1-212-213-3337. My advice for those calling Gonzalez – if you
do not appear to be fully committed to his therapy you probably won’t be
accepted as a patient.
MORE
TO COME
The following was added on
Every age is afflicted by
armies directed by criminals who promote the use of force and violence to
achieve their selfish ends. Armies of the past were easily recognized – they
wore identifiable uniforms and carried recognizable weapons. They were easily
differentiated by the man-on-the-street.
Not so with the new
criminally directed army.
The violent, destructive
army of today, which has been slowly forming over the centuries, gaining power
little by little through the years is the army of the white coats – the doctors
– operating under the direction of criminals with the force of
bureaucracy-endowed power.
The white coats are the most destructive element on the planet today. They have adulterated our foods, our drinking water, and our bodies, with their quack remedies.
Most importantly, they have
robbed us of our right to choose for ourselves, the type of treatment we desire
for ourselves and our children.
They have brought into the
American culture MANDATORY MEDICINE, COMPULSORY
VACCINATION.
COMPULSORY
MEDICINE IN ANY FORM OTHER THAN MOMENTARY QUARANTINE FOR A SPECIFIC REASON AND
SPECIFICALLY LIMITED TIME PERIOD IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE IN A FREE SOCIETY OR IN
ANY SOCIET Y. –
COMPULSORY MEDICINE OF ANY
TYPE IS REPUGNANT.
2.
WARNING AGAINST USE OF ABORTION PILL
RSU-486
The abortion pill is made up of two different pills administered in series. The first is Mifepristone. The second is Cytotec. Searle manufactures Cytotec and issued the following warning on its use: Doctors are warned not to use it "off label" for induction of labor and abortion because it can lead to severe bleeding and uterine ruptures requiring surgery. It might cause death. Cytotec is the only drug available presently to accompany the Mifepristone. CYTOTEC WAS ORIGINALLY DESIGNED AND APPROVED TO BE USED IN THE PREVENTION OF ULCERS. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED, DRUG PROFIT SUPPORTED JUNK SCIENCE THAT IS NOT ONLY CONDONED, BUT ENCOURAGED BY, YOUR GOVERNMENT.
The Mifepristone is being made in
3.
A CLASSICAL
EXAMPLE OF MEDICAL QUACKERY
21st CENTURY
STYLE:
THE NON
SPECIFICITY
OF "PROSTATE
SPECIFIC" ANTIGEN
By Daniel H
Duffy Sr, DC
On
On a recent
visit to His MD, he was examined in orthodox fashion and found to have
an elevated PSA for which an incredibly expensive drug was prescribed.
It cost over $1000 for 90 pills. Three of the pills immediately made him
sick so he stopped taking the drug after his first three
doses.
Of course, he
only paid five of the $1000 plus dollars it cost - we the taxpayers paid the
rest - thanks to the criminal efforts of LBJ - the great provider of
MEDICARE.
All of LBJ's
programs demonstrably failed - especially the negative income tax fiasco which
really backfired but not before it tore apart the negro and hispanic families in
which it resulted in divorce rates as high as >80percentile. [if you would
like to read about that see
1. PSA means
Prostate Specific Antigen.
2. PSA is NOT
specific and has LITTLE to do with the prostate specifically.
3. PSA is
found in females with breast, lung and uterine cancers. [whoops!] In
fact, the highest levels of PSA have been found in females RECOVERING from
breast cancers. [J Nat'l Cancer Inst Oct 6, 1999, Fortier, AH et al] Surprise,
surprise, the ladies that made the best recoveries were the ones with the
highest PSA levels!!
4. PSA
appears to be an anti-angiogenic molecule. For those of you unfamiliar with the
term, one of the features of cancer is that it has an enormous appetite and
therefore needs a huge blood supply to feed it, so wherever you see cancer
growing, you will see angio-genesis taking place – the creation of new vascular
tissue. [That's why shark cartilage became popular.]
5. PSA
appears to inhibit the usual increases in circulation necessary to feed the
cancer and to support its rapid growth and proliferation.
6. Nicholas
Gonzalez MD of NYC reports patients who have shown PSA levels of a hundred or
more for long periods of time who are doing just fine as they recover from their
cancers - he opines that increased PSA levels indicates a GOOD response by the
body, NOT a BAD response. [audio tapes 12 and 17 spring 1999 lecture, ACAM
– see ordering info below]. Dr Gonzalez uses the nutritional protocol that
he learned from his teacher, the orthodontist and scientist, Dr William Donald
Kelley of Grapevine, Texas, who is one of my three nominees for the Nobel prize
in medicine [along with George J Goodheart DC and James Pershing Isaacs MD].
Gonzalez also reports a properly recovering cancer patient with a CEA of
350,000, the highest in medical history. See the article on the site on the AMAS
test to learn about the CEA which is another cancer marker. When a tumor breaks
down it dumps all the CEA into the blood stream. BE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK
ABOUT BLOOD TEST LEVELS AND TUMOR SIZES, MORE IS OFTEN NOT WORSE, AND
BIGGER, ESPECIALLY, IS OFTEN NOT WORSE than smaller!!! Some tumors
tend to encapsulate and get bigger not smaller!!
7. So giving
a toxic drug for a "specific" antigen which is not at all "specific" is just one
more in a long line of examples of medical quackery being propagated by present
establishment sources. It’s sort of like giving a deadly drug for a non
infectious, non transmissible disease [AIDS] allegedly caused by an unproved
virus [HIV]. It can also be compared to injecting newborn babies with foreign
proteins and heavy metal poisons to “protect” them from adult diseases in dope
addicts. Note that I use the old
familiar term for these human wastrels – “dope addicts” rather than “substance
abusers” – dope addict is more apropos. Sort of like calling a bum a bum, rather
than a homeless person. Using the euphemism “homeless person” might make you
feel better but hey, life is not fair, some people are bums. Face it. Others are
criminals. Face it. Not facing it results in what we’re discussing here. Highly
educated people committing crimes against humanity and getting away with it
largely because our language is politically correct. If we were in the habit of
calling bums what they are, and dope addicts what they are, we might not find it
so difficult to call an MD a quack and a criminal and begin to take steps to put
them where they belong, behind bars, not out on the street preying on the
innocent and the ignorant.
The very
highly educated, brilliant doctor, Thomas Stamey published the original study on
PSA in the
The
activities of Dr Stamey raise several questions:
1. Do you
think that Dr Stamey should be held accountable for those unnecessary surgeries?
2. What do
you think would happen to the tobacco industry executives or the auto industry
executives or the toy industry executives if they were caught killing, maiming
or harming so many people – especially innocent children like those suffering
from quack vaccine induced disabilities and death?
3. Do you
think the deaths of prostate cancer patients resulting from misdiagnosis and
maltreatment became part of the statistics used to place the practice of
orthodox medicine in third place on the list of causes of unnecessary deaths in
the
4. Are you
beginning to get the right idea about the dreadful effects orthodox medicine in
the 21st century?
I'll say it
once again, CONSENSUS-DRIVEN, ORTHODOX MEDICINE IS CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR, IT IS BAD
FOR YOUR HEALTH AND IT IS THE ROOT SOURCE OF ALL OF THE MEDICAL QUACKERY
OF THE 21st CENTURY. It is also the greatest threat to life and limb and health
in all recorded history. Do you REALLY think that orthodox medicine is only
number three in the cause of deaths in the
And we want
to trust these people and accept what they have to say about VACCINES??? We want
to trust these consensus driven quacks to inject our neonates with poisons? We
want to accept the dribble and gobbledook nonsense they continue to propagate
about vaccines, phantom diseases, phantom viruses, and
now…prions???
CRISIS
MEDICINE, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS A BLESSING TO HUMANITY - IT WILL SAVE
YOUR LIFE IN AN EMERGENCY, RESCUE YOU FROM CONGENITALLY INFLICTED PROBLEMS, AND
SPARE YOU MOST OF THE UNNECESSARY PAIN AND SUFFERING FROM TRAUMA AND ACCIDENTS –
don’t confuse one with the other, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
PASS THIS ON
TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE, ESPECIALLY YOUR
LEGISLATORS.
ORDER THE
GONZALEZ AUDIO TAPES FROM:
Anthony
Crum
Professional Audio
Recording
800-430-4727
Dr.
Gonzalez's talks are available from the ACAM
4.
THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF
CANCER
AND ITS SCIENTIFIC
BASIS
BEING COLLECTED PAPERS DEALING WITH THE
ORIGIN, NATURE, AND SCIENTIFIC TREATMENT OF THE NATURAL PHENOMENON KNOWN AS
MALIGNANT DISEASE.
BY
JOHN BEARD,
D.Sc.
“When, from a correct General
Principle, one develops the conclusions in special cases of its application, new
surprises, for which one was not previously prepared, always make their
appearance. And, since the
conclusions unfold, not according to the author’s caprice, but after their own
laws, it has often made the impression upon me that really it was not my own
work which I wrote down, but merely the work of
another.
Hermann
Von Helmholtz
CHATTO &
WINDUS
1911
PREFACE
“Man,” writes the learned
and genial Carl Ernst von Baer, “considers himself just as necessarily in the
centre of his mental horizon as of his mathematical one.” When, in the closing
hours of the last day of the nineteenth century, I wrote this citation in the
original German, as the opening words of the preface of the first of a series of
memoirs upon the history of the germ-cells, I little reckoned that the
controversy regarding their story, which was the final link in the general
principle of an antithetic alternation of generations, would be carried on
around the side-issue—the special case in von Helmholtz’s sense—of the origin,
nature, and scientific treatment of cancer. All. Of these are concerns of
embryology, for they are problems of reproduction, growth, and there
stereo-chemical processes of life. In the discussion of a similar problem of
embryology—that of parthenogenesis (pFdogenesis) or virgin
reproduction in fly-maggots (Ceidomya) –von Baer used the above
words. His account of this discovery of Wagner’s has its special interest in
connection with the present work.
Carl Ernst von Baer
writes: * “that at first the dis-
*Baer, Carl Ernst von: “Über Prof. Nic. Wagner’s Entdeckung von Larven, die sich fortpflanzen, Herrn Ganin’s verwandte und engänzende Beobachtungen und über die Paedogenesis überhaupt,” in Mélanges Biologiques, v., 1865, pp. 203-308; loc. cit., pp 241-243.
v
covery appears to be
received with doubt” –that even the well-known worker on the parthenogenesis of
bees, von Siebold, expressly said that it appeared to him to be incredible—“only
shows how unexpected it was and how little one was prepared for it. It is thus a
testimony of its importance, and, so to speak, a compliment for it. I should
like to recall an expression of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s who, when someone
criticized one of his earlier philological works adversely, in a reply expressed
himself somewhat as follows: ‘A book which immediately on its first appearance
finds general approval really does not deserve to be printed at all, for it
contains only that which in the convictions of all is completely accepted, or at
lease for which they were entirely prepared.’ That is very true, for the really
new, when it is far-reaching and thorough, can only gradually find an entrance,
because numerous convictions must be altered in order to make its proper place
for the new-comer. That the corals were inhabited by animals was first
discovered by the naval surgeon Peyssonel, in the years 1723-1725, and it was no
less a man than the great Réaumur who rejected the discovery as an absurdity in
1727, when Peyssonel had communicated his finds to him. These researches had
been carried on for several years, and they were indeed numerous and careful,
for Peyssonel says: ‘In the tubes of Tubipora there sit animals, what one
believes to be flowers in the noble corals’” (Corallium rubrum, the red coral of commerce) “ ‘are also animals; for they occur at
all seasons of the year, they retract themselves when they are touched, and when
one lifts the corals out of water, in the Madreporarian corals the animals
resemble the sea-anemones; the skeleton of the coral on decomposing gives off an
animals odour, and even the chemical investigation proves the presence of animal
substances.’
vi
All these grounds Réaumur
mentions, but concludes that the corals are plants which excrete a stony
substance, and that if one sees animals in them these must be parasites which
have wandered into them. He finds it quite out of question , as one sees, to
imagine the existence of branched animals. Out of consid-eration for the
individual, he does not mention the name of him who had asserted such remarkable
things, In this way Peyssonel remained quite unknown and unrecognized. But when,
later on, Trembley made known his observations on the fresh-water polypes, and
in the buds of these one had before his eyes a branched, animal, Réaumur asked
the botanist, Bernard de Jussieu, who was going to the seaside, to examine what
connection this had with the corals. When, then, De Jussieu expressed himself in
favour of their animal nature, Réaumur at last believed it himself, and withdrew
his former judgment. Peyssonel, who learnt in the West Indies that Réaumur had
not published the memoir sent to him, but that later on the correctness of his
discovery had been recognized, in 1751 sent a new memoir, not to Paris, but to
London, where in appeared in 1753 in the Philosophical Transactions. Thus,
thirty years passed before he succeeded in publishing his discovery, and five
years more before, by the publication of the tenth edition of Linnæus’s “Systema
Naturæ’ (1758), it gained general acceptance. How many and angry writings did
there not appear against Harvey’s account of the circulation of the blood,
because it was not known what to do with the air or the spirits (Archæi) which were supposed to reside in
the arteries, and when Harvey died, twenty years after the publication of his
discovery, it had not yet become generally accepted. Much longer still was it
before the discovery of Copernicus found general acceptance,
and
vii
the earth had to describe
its path round the sun many times before the Holy Chair allowed it to be spoken
of publicly.”
At that time, in view
of the history of science, it was quite anticipated, that the new facts
concerning the history and continuity of the germ-cells from generation to
generation would obtain a hostile welcome and reception, and that their
discoverer would undoubtedly win a reward for all his patient labours similar to
the recompenses meted out in past times to all those pioneers, termed by Robert
Browning, “God’s elect,” from Khalif Al-Mamun, who dared to measure the earth
and to describe it as a globe, down to Pasteur, who in our own day, among other
brilliant deeds, caused “chemistry to take possession of medicine” (Duclaux).
But the anathema did not come then; it was reserved for another occasion, and
one of far greater import for human welfare and hopes. On the one hand, some of
the germ-cell finds could be annexed—apparently—by others; on the other, they
seemed to fit in so well with Weismann’s conceptions of a hypothetical
germ-plasm – a thing non-existent—that to many it appeared possible to
incorporate them with the doctrines of this distinguished zoologist. To another,
again, they looked like furnishing in fact a confirmation of the vague
speculations of Richard Owen, and this has led to the assignment of the actual
work and discoveries to him, who actually never did any investigations at all
into the history of the germ-cells. In fine, in one way or another, the
germ-cell finds wee disposed of and dispersed. Some of them—some of the more
fundamental points—were cast aside and ignored; others, the more obvious, were
annexed or parcelled out, and ascribed to this, that, or the other embryologist
or zoologist, and practically nothing at all was left over
to
viii
the credit of the original
observer, who, indeed, ought to have congratulated himself on the –for his
welfare—fortunate turn of events. All this has reference to
Then came the time,
the “divisions” and “brigades” being complete and ready, and eager to take the
field, when the general principle of an antithetic alternation of generations,
with an actual tangible continuity of germ-cells from generation to generation,
had to be applied to the special case of cancer or malignant disease. Since it
has long been one of my maxims in research to reap and garner the harvest
completely, leaving as little gleanings as possible for others, this application
of the general principle could not be left undone. Cancer stood defiantly in the
way, and an immediate decisive campaign against it was
inevitable.
New conclusions were
reached, one after the other, and in due course these were published. Mankind in
general , and medical mankind in particular, wee supposed to be waiting the
advent of some new scientific discovery concerning the nature of cancer, in the
hope that this would lead ultimately to success in its non-operative medical
treatment. The reception give to the new conclusions in
Two of the discoveries
referred to by von Baer—those of Copernicus and Harvey—had this feature in
common:
ix
that, at the time they were
published, it was not, and could not be, foreseen that they possessed intrinsic
vital importance for mankind. None the less, they were denounced, and their
authors along with them. Did the histories of the discoveries of Morton,
Simpson, Semmelweis, Lister, and—last and greatest—Pasteur not prove the
contrary, one might have concluded that the main reasons for the opposition to,
and the denouncement of, Copernicus and Harvey, for example, were that these
discoveries had no apparent bearing on the physical welfare of humanity. If so,
mankind would welcome eagerly any discoveries relating to the scientific nature
and treatment of cancer, even though, as an old and very wise friend re-marks,
they were made by a chimney-sweep.
Actual experiences
have not tallied with these anticipations. Whether it would have been otherwise
had the discoveries been made and published twenty-five or thirty years earlier
–for instance, in my student days, or at the time when the late Sir James Paget
concluded (1887), that operative interference with can-cer was not advisable,
--is a moot question. In the light of actual events, since the scientific man
especially learns from experience, I have surmised, perhaps rightly, that all
these denunciations of scientific discoveries and of their authors –the latter
including among many other Khalif Al-Mamun, Servetus, Coperniucus, Giordana
Bruno, Galileo, Vesalius,*
* “In the same year (1543, when appeared the treatise of Copernicus on the ‘Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies’), Vesalius, a young Belgian anatomist, published his “Structure of the Human Body,’ a volume rich in facts ascertained by dis-section. Some of these facts were held to contradict the teaching of Galen. Next year Vesalius was driven by the hostility of the medical profession to burn his manuscripts and relinquish original work; he was not yet thirty years of age” (L. C. Miall, ‘History of Biology,’ 1911, p. 20).
x
De Dominis, Harvey, Buffon,
Morton, Simpson, Semmelweis, Lister, and Pasteur, etc.—have been due, not so
much to religious motives and the odium
theologicum, as to the innate constitution of human nature and its
intolerance of the new and the strange, even though this be calculated to be of
surpassing benefit to humanity.
As to the particular
instance dealt with in this book I have nothing at all to retract—even at the
stake—concerning my scientific conclusions as to the origin, nature, and
rational treatment of the natural phenomenon known as cancer or malignant
disease. The words of Galileo, Eppur si
muove, were a definite enough statement on his position. Pasteur told his
opponents that he lived in a realm of which they knew nothing and into which
they had no entry. These words of his also I adopt. Cancer is a natural
phenomenon, germinal in origin and asexual (trophoblastic) in nature, and it is
one which, by the laws of Nature, must yield to the magic influences of the
all-powerful ferments, trypsin and amylopsin. Of these, trypsin has been
described—rightly—by a scientific man, Dr. Emil Westergaard, as far “more
powerful than dynamite.”
Those who think
differently, or think they think differently, or who don’t think at all, and who
without adducing any but negative finds without value in science, persist in
denying the scientific research nugatory, all scientific evidences in utter
disregard of truth itself, are endeavouring, possibly without even knowing it,
to render all scientific research nugatory, all scientific progress an
impossibility. The logical sequel to all such futile and vain opposition to
scientific truth and progress would be, not the creation and lavish endowment of
institutes for cancer research, but the foundation of societies for the
prevention of cruelty to cancer.
No apology is offered
for the very frequent use of the
xi
term “science” and its
variations in the present writing. The writer is actuated solely by his deep
reverence for the truths of Nature: her facts and truths are to him everything,
and human “authority” nothing. Neither praise nor blame, nor even abuse nor
ridicule, is asked for, sought after, or desired. The actual discoveries
entailed in the finding out of Nature’s remedies for malignant disease possibly
are, be it admitted, trifling; perhaps, too, they deserve no human praise, much
less do they call for ridicule. The long years spent in daily and nightly
labours in the search after the general principle of an antithetic alternation
of generations as the basis of the life-cycle of all the higher animals,
including man, were something different, and the results were their own and only
reward. Why the publication of true facts of Nature—such as are recorded in this
book—should earn for their author the recompense of ridicule I know not.
Baseless assertions—such as that “trypsin” is without action upon living
cancer-cells—are not evidences, and in no civilized court of justice would they
be admitted as such. One thing is now clear, and the whole world may be
challenged to contradict it: this is, that if it be asserted—as it has been more
than once publicly by British official researchers—that trypsin is devoid of
action upon living cancer-cells, then this same “trypsin” would also be found by
an physiological chemist to be destitute of action upon all other albuminous
substances in this universe. A “trypsin” devoid of action upon cancer-cells can
also have no action at all upon milk, and yet it is mainly by its action upon
milk that trypsin is usually estimated by chemists and by manufacturers of
ferment preparations. Since a strong solution of trypsin, when injected daily
hypodermically, has been known to liquefy a large living recurrent epithelioma
or skin-cancer in less
xii
than fourteen days, it
follows, that those who assert, that “trypsin” is devoid of action upon living
cancer-cells, might state with equal truth, that the “trypsin” they used had
also no action at all upon anything else-
that is, was quite
inert.
Looking back over the
history of the ferment, trypsin, in science, though really discovered, but not
named, by Baron Corvisart in 1857, it was for some ten years in danger of being
forgotten. Then, in 1867, Professor W. Kühne took it up for research purposes,
and in 1876 he gave it the name it bears of “trypsin,” from TpúXw, “I wear away.” That is,
it took Kühne nine years to establish this ferment securely as a possession of
science. Why should I expect to be more fortunate than he? If nine years were
required to set at rest the question of the mere actual existence of such a
ferment as trypsin, it is perhaps quite out of question to say how many times
the earth will have to describe its path round the sun -–n conformity with the
doctrine of Coperniucus—before mankind will admit the truth of my discoveries
concerning Nature’s uses of trypsin and its complement, amylopsin. It may be
that they, including many surgeons, would rather themselves die of cancer than
admit the truth. Like the other happenings in the history of the reception of my
cancer studies, this would not be at all a new attitude, for, according to
Brewster, “a protégé of Kepler’s, of the name of Horky, wrote a volume against
Galileo’s discovery” of the satellites of Jupiter, “after having declared ‘that
he would never concede his four new planets to that Italian from Padua, even if
he should die for it.’” But sooner or later, if not now –possibly in the far-off
future, when the inertia of the past two thousand years shall have ceased to be,
and a new advance of the human intellect shall commence –it will be
recognized
xiii
that, while the ferments of
cancer came into existence in the dim and distant past in an ascending series of
complexity, for the purpose of building-up asexual generation, trypsin and its
modification, amylopsin, were evolved millions of years ago as things even more
powerful than the ferments of cancer, and for the primary purpose of pulling
down asexual generation, in order that something new –a sexual generation—might
arise, blossom, and people the earth. That these latter ferments have also a
very great digestive import, and are, therefore –to man, as the centre of the
universe—of personal and even great commercial value, happens to be a corallary
to what was their original use, and to the uses which they are still first of
all given by Nature in every normal development.
Each one of us human
beings, in the course of the gestation in which he or she arose, as a prime
condition of his or her existence and persistence, was compelled by the iron
necessity of Nature to destroy a natural phenomenon of the same nature as cancer
–to wit, the trophoblast or asexual generation of normal development—and by no
other means than the secretion of pancreatic ferments. This is the reason which
confers a lasting truth on the words which I wrote down on December 8, 1904, and
which, almost immediately, gave the solution of the problem of cancer—“The
mammalian embryo solved the problem of cancer ages ago.” “Still it moves,”
commented Galileo. If the enzyme treatment of cancer be abandoned for the next
century—if trypsin and amylopsin be maligned as “useless” or “futile” in
cancer—all the same every human being who comes into this world in that time
will never omit to employ his own pancreatic ferments in his development—never
fail, since failure means death, to the pancreatic or
enzyme
xiv
treatment of cancer in his
own gestation—for the suppression of normal trophoblast or asexual generation.
For otherwise this, as the most deadly form of cancer
known—chiro-epithelioma—would inevitably destroy him—and his parent. In normal
development, trypsin and amylopsin, unheeding human medical and surgical
perversity, intolerance, and ignorance, will continue to destroy cancer, or
trophoblast, or asexual generation, as in the past has happened for untold
millions of years, for long ages before man was evolved.
For this is one of
Nature’s fundamental postulates, one of her inexorable laws for the continued
existence of a race of human beings to people the earth, and without its strict
and unbending observance there would be no living human beings upon the earth,
no surgeons, no “cancer experts,” loudly parading and proclaiming publicly their
ignorance of the origin and nature of cancer, and –no problems of
cancer.
*
*
*
*
*
It is a pleasant duty to put on record here how much in recent years the
writer owes to the help of Messrs. Fairchild Brothers and Foster, of
xv
no man on earth could have a
greater satisfaction than he in seeing this enzyme treatment
succeed.
Of the portions of the
book which have been published previously,
8,
Barnton Terrace,
xvi
CONTENTS
PART 1
THE PROBLEMS OF CANCER
CHAPTER
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
1
I.
EMBRYOLOGICAL ASPECTS AND
ETIOLOGY OF CARCINOMA
48
II.
THE EMBRYOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY
OF TUMOURS
67
III.
THE PROBLEMS OF CANCER
95
IV. THE CANCER PROBLEM
108
V.
THE INTERLUDE OF CANCER
122
VI. THE ASYMMETRY OF THE CYCLE OF
LIFE, BEING “THE END OF THE THREAD”
143
PART
II
THE
PANCREATIC OR ENZYME TREAT OF CANCER
RETROSPECT
166
VII.
GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR THE
PANCREATIC OR ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS
188
VIII. TWO RECENT CASES
209
IX.
ON THE RELATIONS OF TRYPSIN AND
AMYLOPSIN
223
X.
A PUBLISHED TEST OF “THE TRYPSIN TREATMENT OF CANCER”
230
XI.
THE CRUCIAL TEST OF THE
NATURE OF CANCER
235
XII. “SCIENCE IS PREVISION”
243
xvii
CONTENTS
PAGE
APPENDIX A :
THE
APPENDIX B:
PICK: IN THE “DISCUSSION ZU
DEN VORTRÄGEN ÜBER DIE ÆTIOGIE DES CARCINOMS,”
IN “BERLINER KLIN. WORCHENSCHRIFT,” 1905, NO. 13. ABSTRACT OF THE REMARKS
CONTRIBUTED BY THE PATHOLOGIST DR. L. PICK TO THE DISCUSSION ON
THE
ETIOLOGY OF CANCER, IN
APPENDIX C:
THE LIFE-CYCLE OF THE HIGHER ANIMALS AND ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS
255
APPENDIX D:
THE NAPELS CASE OF EPITHELIOMA OF THE TONGUE
265
APPENDIX E:
THE FUNCTION OF THE CORPUS LETEUM
267
APPENDIX F:
THE TREATMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS IN SANATORIA
271
APPENDIX G:
SOME OF THE SUCESSFUL CASES REPORTED IN PAST YEARS, ALL OF WHICH WERE
TREATED
WITH GENUINE PREPARATIONS OF TRYPSIN AND AMYLOPSIN
273
APPENDIX H:
NEGATIVE RESULTS IN SCIENCE
277
APPENDIX K:
SCIENTIFIC PRIORITY
279
APPENDIX L:
“ENCEPHALOID” CANCER OF THE BREAST
280
APPENDIX M:
THE GERMAN PREPARATIONS
281
INDEX
283
xviii
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGS.
FACING PAGE
I-4. ILLUSTRATING THE
GERM-CELLS OF FISHES AND THEIR MIGRATIONS INTO THE
EMBRYONIC
BODY
58
5.
DIAGRAM OF THE LIFE-CYCLE OF
A BACK-BONED ANIMAL
124
6.
AFTER FOUR MONTHS’ TREATMENT,
SHOWING NECROTIC TUMOR IN SITU.
7.
AFTER REMOVAL OF DEAD TUMOUR
EN MASSE. TUMOUR LIFTED OUT WITH
DISSECTING
FORCEPS WITHOUT BLEEDING OR OOZING.
8.
NO TUMOUR LEFT: PARTS HEALED
AND CLEAN,
9.
PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN
IN FIG. 6) HAD BEEN LIFTED OUT OF THE CHEEK WITH FORCEPS
210
10.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SLIDE OF THE
TUMOUR WHICH WAS PREPARED BY A PATHOLOGIST
OF THE
CAPTAIN LAMBELLE, HAS BEEN ERASED
212
11.
MICRO-PHOTOGRAPH OF A PORTION OF
THE SLIDE OF FIG. 10. PREPARED BY MR. A.
FLATTERS, F.R.M.S.,
xix
THE
ENZYME TREATMENT OF
CANCER
AND ITS SCIENTIFIC
BASIS
INTRODUCTION
Some years ago a former
fellow-student—M.D. (Lond.), Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London,
physician to a large hospital in London – remarked that a single case of cure of
undoubted cancer would establish the truth of the writer’s published statements,
and bring the whole world to his feet.
Not long after then, here and there cures were published; but to these I
will not refer; for, unlike those of the York case, the scientific proofs of
them are not in my possession, and in one way or another it may be said of many
of them, that the evidences in their favour were incomplete or inconclusive,
which latter was, indeed, the verdict pronounced, without adducing scientific
evidences, upon “trypsin” by Sir Henry Morris, Bart., late President of the
Royal College of Surgeons, London, as recently as 1908. To a profession such as the medical one,
which does not yet grasp the nature of the scientific evidences, the results of
the pancreatic or enzyme treatment, even in the most favourable cases, might
easily have been taken to be “inconclusive.” The scientific facts that certain
tumours had yielded to the stereo-chemical test—the highest court of appeal—and
thereby had shown their malignant
1
nature, were not evidences
to those, who knew nothing at all of modern embryology or of stereo-chemistry,
and who relied implicitly upon the microscopical examination and appearances of
a portion of the growth taken before or after operation. Then there were the countless failures,*
many of them due, as I am now convinced, to faulty preparations, or to
injections which were very much too weak for their work. In this way great difficulties had to be
surmounted, quite apart from what has been termed the “conservatism” of the
medical profession. Apart from the
latter, these difficulties seem now to have been removed. Definite statements can be made
concerning the requirements of really efficacious preparations for the
treatment, and a successful case of cure, not standing isolated, can be, and is,
produced in the present writing.
*For the sake of the scientific truth, the published opinion of Professor
F. Blumenthal, of the
2
In
the eighth section of “The Belfast Address” the physicist, Professor John
Tyndall, wrote: “But there is in
the true man of science a desire stronger than the wish to have his beliefs
upheld—namely, the desire to have them true. And this stronger wish causes him to
reject the most plausible support if he has reason to suspect that it is
vitiated by error.” That is the
writer’s position to-day. Six years
ago he stated publicly that, in the secretion of that important digestive gland,
the pancreas, Nature had furnished a potent means of coping with cancer. Even though there had been no other
successes at the hands of Captain Lambelle, R.A.M.C. or of other, the successful
issue of the case of the
3
A surgeon, who published as
a “scientific report” an account of the failure of the enzyme treatment at his
hands in a large series of (mostly very advanced) cases, remarked to the writer
not long ago that a single case of success would not prove his thesis. The exact opposite of this assertion has
been maintained quite recently by the Moseley Professor Surgery in
*”Encephaloid cancer,” a term used by pathologists to define soft cancer from hard cancer, or scirrhus. Encephaloid cancer is so termed because of its brain-like softness. It is described as quick-growing and rapidly fatal (see Appendix L).
4
1910, he writes concerning
this case: “By the way, that case of encephaloid breast cancer is alive and free
from recurrence—diagnosed October, 1908.
I saw her on November 29, as near as mortal man can say ‘cured.’” Further comment on the above is not
needed.
I was well aware, as any scientific man is, that negative results in
scientific experiments never proved anything at all in science, but was also
under the impression that very many scientific discoveries of great moment had
been the outcome of single successful experiments. The fall of an apple from a tree
revealed the law of universal gravitation to
*Looking at the matter from the point of view of practical embryology, the so-called “cures” of cancer by surgical operation are probably in all cases without exception examples of the “cure” of a benign tumour, a more or less reduced “embryoma.” Naturally benign tumours are of common occurrence, and whether diagnosed by microscopical examination or only clinically , the diagnosis of cancer is not one which can be regarded as conforming to a scientific criterion. When one thinks of the extraordinary frequency of recurrence after surgical operation, one can only conclude that, in the absence of the crucial stereo-chemical tests, either of adequate injections of sufficiently potent preparations of trypsin and amylopsin, or of examination of the tumour albumins by means of the polarimeter, at present there is no valid evidence extant that operation has ever cured a single case of malignant disease, though it may quite well have induced it, as the X rays have often done. Sir James Paget. A scientific
5
surgical operation are not
in blocks of certain dimension; but assuming that surgery ever does cure even a
single case of cancer—a very big assumption which, as a scientific man, I make
only for the sake of argument—each case of cure would be of the nature of a
single successful experiment. I do
not for a moment deny that surgery does, and has done, many very wonderful
thing, but to assert that it ever knowingly cures a single case of cancer is a
scientific absurdity.
If ten, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand cases of cure be
required—by the surgeons, not by science—to establish truth of the scientific
foundations of the pancreatic or enzyme treatment of cancer, then from the
particulars furnished in later chapters of this book, any of these numbers can
be obtained, always provided, as the lawyers say, that properly and
scientifically standardized and guaranteed preparations be employed and the
treatment be carried out in the scientific fashion—letter and spirit—laid down
here by Captain Lambelle and the writer.
Since the medical profession of Great Britain has, through some of its
members, been most careful to guard that the writer, who is a mere scientific
man, and “not even a medical practitioner,” should treat no cases at all—cancer
being a natural phenomenon, not “an incurable disease”—more than this single
demonstration cannot be asked from me.
There is, sad enough to say, no dearth of cases, for in
(continued from page 5 footnotes)
man of high standing because of the extent and nature of his investigations, doubted whether operation was ever advisable in case of cancer, and on the evening of my Liverpool lecture of 1905, I heard a prominent surgeon declare that he would not be willing, even in the most favourable case of cancer in which he had operated, to stake a sovereign against its recurrence.
6
It behooves me to add a few words of explanation of Captain Lambelle’s
connection with the work. In his
address, “Science and Immortality” (London, 1904), Sir William Osler, in the
finest written compliment any of my researches had ever received, described
(p.58) “the patiently worked-out story of the morphological continuity of the
germ-plasm” (i.e., the germ-cells) as
“one of the fairy-tales of science.”
Shortly after then their author was to have an unexpected and much
greater compliment, because of a practical kind, paid to these
investigations. As a scientific man
the writer places his trust, in true military fashion, in “divisions” and
“brigades,” represented by the published records of observation and experiment,
and not in “fairy-tales of science.”
The investigation, one of the most powerful of my “divisions,” which
immediately preceded the cancer work was into the history of the germ-cells, the
forerunners of eggs and sperms, from generation to generation. Some of the published results of these
researches found their way as far as
In the first instance these failed, as any experienced practical
embryologist would have foretold.
This officer, Captain F. W. Lambelle, M.D., was shortly afterwards
ordered home again, and, on reporting himself to the Director-General at the War
Office, he related the foregoing facts and his deep interest in my scientific
researches. This led the
Director-General to station Captain Lambelle with the 2nd Light
Dragoons (The Royal Scots Greys), at that time in garrison in
7
announced, Captain Lambelle
entered my little room in full uniform, and saluting, introduced himself, we
have been close friends. He worked
for himself over much my material—a collection also, like the Scots Greys,
“Second to None!”—and he read all my published papers, which, unlike some
scientific people, he thoroughly understood and appreciated; in fact, he evinced
the deepest interest in all the problems and their solutions which had occupied
my leisure hours during many years.
At that time I happened to be, noiens velens, in the thick on the
cancer-business, and he often expressed his regrets that the nature of his work,
with young healthy soldiers, gave him no chances of looking into cancer-matters
practically for himself.
Subsequently, his appointment as operating surgeon of the Military
Hospital, York—the hospital of the Northern Command—placed, one after the other,
four cases of cancer in his way, and of these he cured three, the fourth dying
from hæmorrhage as the treated dead sloughing tumour came away. One of these cases fully recorded in
this book. The other two successful
cases are not laid stress upon by him, simply because, although the clinical
diagnoses of cancer were ample, the microscopical evidences, upon which
scientifically I personally lay no stres at all, were lacking.* In order to say the surgeons who have
set up this arbitrary stand of the microscopical appearances of cancer as a
criterior—often a very deceptive one—the requisite slides of sections of the
tumour have to be produced as completing the surgical
diagnosis.
In his last letter to me before sailing to
*Compare Professor Richardson’s opinion as cited on p. 4.
8
amount to more than 60,000
tryptic units and 120,000 amylolytic ones.
That is to say, for his last published case the strengths and doses of
injections employed during the vital period of the treatment can be stated. This can be said also only of the report
of Messrs. Ball and Thomas. Dr.
Bainbridge, according to his own statement, used injections of five strengths of
trypsin, but in his report he does not discriminate among these, or give
figures, from which even approximate calculations, or any at all; can be
made. All of those in this country,
or elsewhere, who, publicly or privately, have condemned the treatment, with the
single exception mentioned above, whatever its scientific value, have furnished
no particulars of strengths or doses and of the total number of injections
exhibited; in fact, not one of them has given a scientific verdict, for not one
of them has produced any evidences that he ever employed any ferments
whatever. In 1906 and 1907 the
statement was often made by several very prominent
*The first injections of “trypsin” employed in 1906 were all, or nearly all, made up from Fairchild Brothers and Foster’s “trypsin in powder.” This, which is no longer on sale anywhere, was a very potent preparation, and it had been on the market for many years. At the beginning of April, 1906, the manufacturers of this “trypsin in powder,” as they announced by advertisements in the chief British medical and chemical newspapers, withdrew it from sale. Tis step placed others makers of “trypsin injections” upon their own resources, or very largely so. There was already a “famine in the land” as regards “trypsin,” so much of one that I heard through friends of several cancer patients who were being treated with raw sweetbreads,
9
compared with Captain
Lambelle’s usual dose of one thousand (1,000) tryptic units plus two thousand
(2,000) amylolytic units, 1 ampoule or 1 c.c. of each.
A University Professor of Surgery, in support of his public statement of
1910, that the pancreatic ferments were “futile” in cancer, recently sent me
copies of Bainbridge’s report, and an author’s copy of a paper by Sir Henry
Morris, read before the Surgical Congress,
(continued from page 9 footnotes)
or pancreas
glands. I have always considered
the withdrawal of this “trypsin in powder” as a very wise step, but one of its
direct consequences would appear to have been the extensive employment,
especially in and about
10
assertion shall be made
without at the same time the production of the evidences for it.
Of course, “trypsin” is not a cure for cancer, a fact stated by the
writer in Nature four years ago. The evidences for this, it may be added,
are forthcoming in abundance whenever asked for. What has destroyed cancer without injury
to the patient in cases not too far advanced, and what will do the like again
and again, is the use of properly prepared injections of trypsin of a strength
of at least a thousand Roberts tryptic units of activity plus equal amounts of
amylopsin of two thousand to two thousand four hundred (2,000 to 2,400) Roberts
amylolytic units of strength per cubic centimetre, and the doses of injections
and their frequency must be adapted to the needs of the particular case under
treatment.
As “failure is easier of attainment than success in anything,” it would
be possible to the end of time for some surgeon, or official cancer researcher,
to declare that trypsin and amylopsin were “useless,” or “futile,” in the
particular cases treated by him, and used as he employed them. Scientifically, all such verdicts are
worthless, unless the evidences for them be produced in full; and these must
include the previous history of the case, the duration of the treatment, the
preparations used, definite statements as to their purity, all necessary details
as to their quantitative values, their doses, and the number of these. Science, as a mistress, makes exacting
demands upon the observer, and the mere designation of a document as a
“scientific report” does not alone confer any scientific value upon its
contents.
The view generally accepted by mankind, even by all medical men, has long
been that cancer is “an incurable disease.” How often have I not heard this
expression, even from very prominent surgeons! Not only was
11
cancer incurable, but it was
a disease of the nature and origin of which the whole of the medical profession,
by its own confession, often proclaimed by leading surgeons in public orations,
knew nothing at all about. Under
such circumstances it could hardly be strange that it should not be in
conformity with the generally accepted, when a scientific man, who knew very
well what he was speaking about, and who, like Pasteur, had earned the right to
an opinion by his investigations of many long year, announced that cancer was
not a disease, but a natural phenomenon, that it was germinal in origin and
asexual (trophoblastic) in nature.
This was all something new, which had never been said before by anyone,
living or dead. As at the present
time we were supposed, but possibly erroneously, to have outlived the Dark Ages,
and as, at all events, those who made me, the scientific Germans, who have
advanced far beyond the Dark Ages, had long advocated and practised “the freedom
of science in the modern state,” it was something to be examined
scientifically. It is interesting
to see how this was realized in
A recent part of the German Journal of Cancer Investigation (vol.
x., part 1) contains the report of a special Cancer Congress, held in May,
1910. Here Professor C. Neuber,
well known for his researches into the chemistry of cancer, writes on p. 70
regarding the position of chemistry in cancer research in words which recall
Duclaux’s declaration concerning chemistry and medicine. Neuberg affirms that where the problems
of the nature of tumours are in question, chemistry will never retreat from the
field of conflict. Duclaux said:
“With Pasteur chemistry took possession of medicine. It is easy to foresee that she will
never loosen her hold upon it."” As a study of
12
the following pages will
show, my fundamental discoveries of the nature of cancer, and of the places of
the two all-powerful ferments, trypsin and amylopsin, in the treatment of this
natural phenomenon, not disease, were founded in the first instance in the
science of embryology. This is as
true for the separate reasons advanced for the employment of trypsin and of
amylopsin as it is for those urged in 1902 as demonstrating the asexual
(trophoblastic) nature of cancer.*
Afterwards, from 1906, the chemical evidences—the stereo-chemical
ones—began to reveal themselves to the observer, who was not like that genius
Pasteur, “a mere chemist,” but a practical embryologist, who had chanced to have
some sort of elementary chemical education at the hands of Sir Henry Roscoe and
of that pioneer of comparative physiological chemistry, the late Professor C. F.
W.
*Sexual and Asexual, Sexual Generation and Asexual Generation.—In animals and in plants two modes of reproduction are recognized, the sexual one, by means of germ-cells, eggs, and sperms, and the asexual by budding, which is really a process of continuous indefinite cell-division, with no eggs or sperms. In an animal or plant a sexual generation is one which bears reproductive organs, in which eggs or sperms, or both, arise. On the other hand, an asexual generation of an animal or plant is one which never bears reproductive organs, eggs or sperms, or both, but which reproduces in the way indicated above, really by cell-division. In plants the asexual generation is the flowering plant, which is capable of indefinite unrestricted increase, as, for example, a Gloire de Dijon rose or the fine white chrysanthemum, Niveus. Origianlly there was but one plant of each of these. The sexual generation of a flowering plant is a small microscopic entity contained with the flower. In animals all the individuals which bear sexual organs belong to the sexual generation, which the asexual generation are represented in various ways. Thus, in the sea-ploypes, by the colony of polypes, while here the medusæ or “jelly-fish” are sexual; in worms, starfish, etc., but what are known as larvæ, while here the wor, starfish, etc., are sexual; and lastly, in the highest animals or mammals the asexual generation is present only during uterine life, as what Hubrecht termed the trophoblast. This latter used to be regarded as one of the “fœtal membranes” under the name of chorion.
13
Krukenberg. Thus it came about that, while the line
of first advance was purely embryological, later a junction could be effected
with the science of stereo-chemistry, and a further base for operations obtained
in the fundamental discoveries of Pasteur on the asymmetry of naturally
occurring organic compounds.
The following remarks* (literally translated), by Professor F.
Blumenthal, of
* Blumenthal, F., “Innere Behandlung und Fürsorge bei Krebskranken,” in Zeitschr. F. Krebsforschung, 1910, vol. X., pp. 137-138.
† It would appear not to have occurred to Professor Blumenthal that this
statement might have reference to inert ferments. Since the experiments, which must be
supposed to have led to this erroneous conclusion, have never yet been
published, and since they are, indeed, not mentioned in a single word in the
Third Scientific Report of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, published in 1908,
and, lastly, since there are no scientific or other evidences extant to show
that ferments of any kind or sort had ever been employed in these unpublished
experiments, I feel bound to ask Professor Blumenthal to explain, as a
scientific man, why he cites these unpublished experiments, and non-existent
evidences? It is common enough to
note in scientific publications that published experiments or evidences have
been ignored by the author, but it is something quite new to find unpublished
experiments and mythical evidences cited in a
14
trypsin I have also noticed
a disagreeable complication, which consists in this, that often the digestive
power of the trypsin passed over also to sound tissue, and a disagreeable
destruction of this came to pass.
Recently Sticker and Falk have improved the trypsin-therapy in that they
have united the action to trypsin to charcoal, by which means, after a single
injection, this action persists much longer, since this carbenzyme is not so
quickly used up as ordinary trypsin.”
Regarding the foregoing, only a few words need be added. It will be noted that Blumenthal also
confirms the “liquefying” action of trypsin on cancer. This has now happened in
(continued from page 14 footnotes)
scientific
paper. Moreover, as Professor
Blumenthal is quite aware, the results of his own experiments with “tryspin” are
in direct contradiction with the verdict pronounced, without the production of
any evidences, by officials of this cancer research. It reminds one of the reception
accorded to von Siebold’s discovery
of two sorts of spermatozoa in a fresh-water diœcious snail, Paludina vivipara, in 1836. Within an easy walk of Würzburg, this
snail is readily found in great numbers, and the first time that these two sorts
of sperms were seen by me was in 1882, in living material obtained not far from
Würzburg. None the less, when von
Siebold published his find, the professor of Anatomy in the
15
ultimately, if used in
solutions of sufficient strength, liquefies them, as maintained by myself,
Blumenthal, and—“in some cases”—by Bainbridge, or it has no action upon them, as
stated in 1906, and again in 1907 by official researchers. One or other of these statements must be
false. The official assertion was
unsupported by the production of any evidences whatever, the former rests upon
the independent testimony of four* different observers, situated as widely apart
as
In the later pages of this book I have explained why it comes about that
in some cases trypsin may act upon
* As I recognize, while finally reading through this manuscript before sending it to press, a fifth observer of the formation of “liquid cancer” can be cited. From the charts of Captain Lambelle’s case of sarcoma, and from his description on a subsequent page of the course of his case of lympho-sarcoma, it is clear that in what he speaks of as “sero-purulent fluid” in the one case, and “purulent fluid” in the other, he was really dealing with liquefied cancer.
† The General Superintendent of this cancer research himself writes as follows: “It is surprising how many people are unconvinced that the scientific examination of such claims presupposes exact knowledge of the ingredients of the remedy. In the absence of this knowledge, negative conclusions could always be ascribed to error” (British Medical Journal, May, 27, 1911, p. 1221). One wonders whether he knew this when the unpublished experiments with “trypsin” were carried out, if so, why he failed to act upon it.
16
“normal” somatic
tissues. It is in very advanced
cancer cases, where the tissues have been much acted upon by the ferments and
toxic products of cancer, and have thereby been injured. In this connection the finds of
Yoshimoto and Neuberg concerning the auto-digestion of cancerous liver, and of
portions bordering upon the cancer, are of much import.
As to the improvements in the treatment brought about by Sticker and
Falk, I content myself with the record of them, and make no comment beyond
saying that, in my opinion, no “trypsin-therapy” which is unaccompanied by
abundant animal amylopsin will be, or can be, satisfactory in the long
run.
In the long, interesting article, summing up what he considers to be our
present knowledge of the chemistry of cancer, published in the “Ergebnisse der
Physiologie” (1910), Professor F. Blumenthal, of
*The prospectus states that “this new edition represents the results of a
fresh survey, undertaken in every department of knowledge by the most eminent
authorities, up to the year 1910.”
17
the reason of my advocacy of
trypsin in cancer that the pancreas-gland was believed to be a t fault in cancer
patients. Versions of the reasons
similar to these two have been given in other places—thus, in the Münchener Medizinische
Wochenschrift. They are both
quite incorrect. My only connection
with the first was in publishing in the Lancet of
18
My theories of cancer, its origin and nature, differ toto cœlo from those advanced by any
other observer, living or dead. The
theory of the germinal origin of cancer, which says that a cancer arises
primarily from a latent germ-cell, does not mean that cancer is embryonic in
origin or character. Germ-cells,
such as fertilized eggs, give rise to something else than embryo or soma: they
produce on occasion trophoblast (asexual generation). I know that some embryologist, for whom
chemistry and physiology have no existence in their researches, describe the
trophoblast of Hubrecht as merely another name for what they term
“extra-embryonic epiblast.” To use
the latter term does not signify anything more than where in normal development
the supposed portion of epiblast lies—i.e., beyond the embryo. I do not agree with them that
trophoblast is epiblastic (embryonic skin) in character, or that their
description of it as “extra-embryonic epiblast” in any way defines it
embryologically. Their account is
merely descriptive, and it gives no information whatever concerning the
chemical, physical, or physiological characters of this “extra-embryonic
epiblast” or trophoblast, which, quite unlike ordinary epiblast or embryonic
skin, eats and erodes the maternal tissues.
In very simple words I will now endeavour to summarize what is meant by
the germinal origin and the asexual or trophoblastic nature of cancer. To these shall be added brief accounts
of the reasons advanced six years ago for employing “the secretion of that
important digestive gland, the pancreas,” including the two ferments, trypsin
and amylopsin, in the scientific treatment of cancer. It is appropriate that this should be
written down on
19
One of the most remarkable of the many brilliant things done by the
illustrious French chemist, Louis Pasteur, was the giving of two public
scientific lectures, in 1860, “On the Asymmetry of Naturally Occurring Organic
Compounds,” which include the albumins, sugars, starches, etc., found or formed
in animals or plants. In a
scientific instrument, known as a polarimeter, these compounds always rotate the
plane of polarized light to the right or to the left. Therefore, by chemists they are
described briefly as dextro- or lævo- (d- or l-) compounds—for example,
dextrose, or d-sugar, and lævulose or 1-sugar. That is, as they occur in living nature,
animals or plants, they are never “compensated mixtures” of both
stereo-isomers—never, for instance, of dextrose, and lævulose—and in such
“compensated mixtures” all rotation is absent, because the one compound twists
the plane of polarized light as much to the right as the other does to the
left. When the chemist is able to
manufacture any of these compounds in the laboratory, he has never been able to
make the one compound, the 1- one, without an equal amount of the other, the d-
one. To get them separated he has
had to employ expedients, such as fermentation by yeast, etc., when one of the
two might be attacked and pulled down, but not the other. The fact that all living organisms,
whether animal or plant, manufacture or contain invariably only the one
stereo-isomer, and not the other, has often been commented upon. Thus, by
Professor W. J. Pope, who writes that while d-glucose (d- sugar) is a valuable
foodstuff, we should be unable to digest its opposite or anithesis, 1-glucose,
although they have the same chemical composition—that is, are isomers or
stereo-isomers. Humanity is,
therefore, according to him, composed of dextro-men and dextro-women; and,
putting his words, which will
20
be found in Chapter VI., in
simpler language, just as we ourselves should probably starve if provided with
food of organic compounds the opposites in light-rotation of those to which we
are accustomed, so our opposites, the lævo-men, if they were to come among us
now, when we have not yet succeeded in manufacturing the more important
foodstuffs artificially, would find our food, even our bodies, not suitable for
their nourishment. That is, these
foodstuffs would require to be changed, or “inverted.” If we our-selves had to digest
compensated mixtures, we should need a double digestive apparatus. He supposes that in course of time the
one set of compounds as articles of food has vanished. If it were scientifically true, as well
as “generally accepted,” that the fertilized egg gave rise directly to an embryo
or individual, then one of the sets would have vanished from the nutrition of
all higher animals. Now, one of my
discoveries has been that Pope’s hypothetical lævo-men do exist, and that they
are represented by, among other things, the cancers. In this way the second set of nutritive
compounds has not vanished, but at its basis the antithesis of two sets of
things—compounds of carbon, defined by Pasteur—is the same antithesis as that of
two sets of living things, asexual and sexual respectively, discovered and in
the researches of more than twenty years described by me as occurring in the
cycle of life of a fish, a frog, or a man, etc.
The fertilized egg, and any of the (primary) germ-cells which arise later
on, possess the intrinsic property (potentiality) of developing in the one
direction or the other; in the asexual, with the cleavage of the fertilized egg,
when trophoblast first raises, as in every normal development; in the sexual,
when a primary germ-cell, which itself is
21
derived ultimately from the
fertilized egg, unfolds as an embryo or individual. What I found was that Nature employed
this peculiarity of the antithetic or opposite character of certain naturally
occurring compounds, all containing carbon, and many of them also nitrogen, as
the chemical basis of the cycle of animal life. She did not attempt to unite both sets
of the compounds, the 1- ones and the d- ones, in any one form, animal or plant;
neither did she dispense with one of the sets. Had she done either of these things, had
she been able to do it, she would have carried out the “generally accepted” view
of direct development, egg leading directly to embryo. Then the egg would produce the hen, and
the hen the egg, and so on ad
infinitum. On the contrary, in
order to get back to the fertilized egg again, Nature had found it necessary to
separate the “compensated mixtures” into their components, to use at one time
the one set, made up of certain 1- and other d- compounds, and then to use the
other set, made up of the opposite ones; that is, she swings the pendulum of
life first in the one direction, and then in the other, and in this way brings
it back again to the starting-point—the fertilized egg.
As pointed out in Chapter VI., in connection with the account of
Professor Pope’s lecture, by means of two generations, asexual and sexual, which
alternate in the life-cycle from egg to egg. Nature not only utilizes two of the
apparent possibilities afforded by the existence of stereo-isomeric compounds,
but also she is thereby enabled to bring round again and again the cycle of life
to its starting-point. Under the
orthodox and “generally accepted” view of direct development these things have
not been explained, but they have simply been ignored. The like orthodox views have also,
notoriously, been
22
impotent to elucidate
cancer, and the reasons for this failure lie on the
surface.
Normally, in development, the fertilized egg, by forming trophoblast
(asexual generation), swings the pendulum in the direction of dextro-albumins,
lævo-starches, and 1- sugars, etc., and later the primary germ-cell, by
unfolding as a sexual individual or embryo (sexual generation), in which new
eggs or sperms arise, reverses the swing of the pendulum in the direction of the
formation of lævo-albumins, dextro-sugars, d-starches, etc. Abnormally, some primary germ-cell,
originally destined to give rise to a twin identical with the individual
harbouring it, either, ab origine,
does this by producing a monstrosity, or a benign tumour—an “embryoma”—or,
remaining latent, anon it swings the pendulum in the opposite direction, and
produces a cancer, which is trophoblastic (asexual) in nature—that is, is the
same product as would arise normally from a fertilized egg. A cancer thus is not somatic, not
embryonic, not “gametoid tissue” (Farmer, Moore, and Walker), not derived from
an “embryonic rest” (Remak-Cohnheim), but it is trophoblast (asexual
generation), the very antithesis or opposite of embryo or soma (sexual
generation), embryologically and chemically.
When Professor Pope spoke of dextro men and women, he would, in my
opinion, have done better to have used the terms “lævo-men” and
“lævo-women.” For while the sugars
and starches of our foodstuffs are d-compounds, the nitrogenous or albuminous
constituents are 1-compounds. This
leads one also to point out to the non-chemical reader that the one
generation—say the sexual one, man—does not use exclusively compounds of one
rotation, 1- or d-ones, but these stereo-isomeric compounds form series, some of
them being 1-compounds,
23
others d-compounds. The like is true of the ferments, which
certain of the albumins give rise to as modifications of themselves. Trypsin is like the albumin from which
it is derived lævo-rotatory; it converts d-starches into d-sugars, among other
things, but not 1-ones, and thus not the 1-glycogen or animal starch of
cancer. It acts upon and pulls down
certain d-compounds of cancer. On
the other hand, the proteolytic or albumin-attacking ferment of cancer is a
dextro-rotatory body, like the (dextro-rotatory) of cancer, from which it is
derived. It attacks and pulls down,
not the living dextro-totatory albumins of cancer, but the living lævo-rotatory
albumins of the human body.
The conception I have formed of one action of amylopsin in the enzyme
treatment of cancer is briefly as follows: Acting upon the living d-albumins of
cancer, trypsin pulls them down in the chemical scale a certain distance, but
not into simple harmless products.
On the contrary, some of the products of its action are very poisonous,
and to all appearance these are dextro-rotatory, like cancer albumin. As compounds of this rotation they can
be acted upon and reduced to simple harmless compounds by the ferment amylopsin,
owing to its configuration, its lævo-rotatory character. †
* For an opportunity of determining these facts concerning the rotations
of trypsin and amylopsin I am indebted to Mr. P. W. Squire,
It was not my purpose to calculate their “specific rotations.”
† The following natural question was recently put to the writer by a surgeon keenly interested in these matters: “If
24
The first and only reasons advanced by me publicly at Liverpool, now six
years ago to the day, for the use of pancreatic ferments in cancer, were that at
a certain period of development every normal embryo, or soma, or sexual
individual, commenced to suppress the trophoblast or asexual generation of
normal development. This came to
pass by the initiation of the functioning of the sweetbread or pancreas-gland,
with its powerful ferments, the two chief of which are trypsin and
amylopsin.
Some imaginary relation of diabetes to cancer, or some suspected failure
or “fault” on the part of the sweetbread or pancreas gland, had nothing at all
to do with the reason—as little as had the discovery a little later on, by
Blumenthal and Wolff, that trypsin easily digests
(continued from page 24 footnotes)
trypsin acts upon dextro-albumins, of what use is it in the ordinary adult body, seeing that the albumins of human food are lævo-albumins?” No more than Nature does would I separate amylopsin in its action from trypsin, for, like Nature, we must associate the two ferments. Trypsin and amylopsin, acting upon the dead lævo-albumins of our food-stuffs: Trypsin only pulls these down to a limited extent, converting them into substances capable of absorption, and on these amylopsin has no action. These are built up again into living lævo-albumins by cell ferments in the body-cells. Trypsin and amylopsin acting upon the living dextro-rotatory albumins of asexual generation or cancer: Trypsin at once attacks these, and pulls them down into quite other bodies than those which its forms from dead lævo-albumins. These bodies, or some of them, are rank poisons to the human body, but, as they are further acted upon amylopsin, and by it pulled down into simple, harmless products, the two ferments, trypsin and amylopsin, acting here together, pull down the cancer-albumins, these products of the action of trypsin are chemically relatively highly organized and can be used as food by the cells of the body. This not the case with the products, to which the action of trypsin and amylopsin on cancer-albumins, living or dead, gives rise. He who doubts the truth of the above had better, before publishing his doubts, study the recent work of Professor Abderhalden and his pupils.
25
cancer cells (in the
test-tube). Nor have I ever held,
as some have done, that because they supposed, erroneously, that trypsin had
some action in “splitting up” glycogen or animal starch, that it “dissolved”
glycogen, therefore it should be used in cancer cases. From the start I wished all the
ferments—trypsin, amylopsin, and steapsin—of the pancreas gland to be used in
the injections employed.* The
import of trypsin was, of course, clear, for it was known, since the work of
Corvisart and Kühne, to attack and pull down dead 1-albumins, and I
anticipated—rightly, in spite of all the contradictions extant, which are
false—that it would, and scientifically regarded must, pull down the living
d-albumins of cancer or trophoblast. †
The special reasons for the employment of very potent injections of
amylopsin, which normally converts starch into a d-sugar, termed “glucose,” came
later on. It was found that the
injections first used, which were very deficient in amylopsin, being sometimes,
indeed, almost chemically pure trypsin, produced after some six to eight weeks,
according to the strengths employed, very bad symptoms. These were first reported to me by
French and Italian physicians, and I told them that, as this treatment followed
the lines of what happened in a normal human gestation from the seventh week
onwards, they
* For evidence of this, reference need only be made to the
following fact: Early in
1906, when the
† The evidences of the truth
of this will be found in the text under the description of the course of the
26
should treat these symptoms
as they would the vomiting of pregnancy.
I then found that for this and for the covulsive illness sometimes
happening in pregnancy, and known as “eclampsia,” there was no rational
treatment extant in medicine. So
once again a new problem had to be solved embryologically. It was, What induced these bad symptoms
in pregnancy, leading up to eclampsia, and in cancer ending with the continued
injected of trypsin, in something identical with eclampsia? With continued improvements in the
treatment, especially in the preparation of the injections, when put up
scientifically, these bad symptoms do not now arise to anything like the extent
that they die in 1906, for example.
They were, in an ascending sereies, nausea, vomiting, pain in the back,
“sleeping in any position,” drowsiness, mental and physical torpor, high
arterial tension, and albuminuria, culminating on occasion in convulsions,
lasting several hours, with complete unconsciousness (coma). Only one case of the latter (mentioned
farther on) was ever reported to me.
It happened that there was an extensive experimental study of eclampsia
in one of the German medical journals for 1905 by Professor Zweifel, as well as
the report of a lecture by him in the
27
milk nutrition, etc., from
the standpoint of the embryologist.
Certain of my researches, published some ten years earlier, when applied
to the problem, furnished the solution with ease. One German medical man has described the
following advocacy of amylopsin in cancer as “fantastic,” which is merely a
pious “opinion,” not a scientific argument; but I am willing to admit that
sometimes Nature may do things which to some people, like a certain King of
Spain, may appear to be “fantastic.”
Whether it be a “fantastic” fact or not, genuine amylopsin always does
its work in the scientific treatment of cancer.
In the days of long ago, in our ancestry, as in that of all mammals, and
as now happens in most marsupials, like the kangaroo, opossum, etc., birth took
place at what I have termed the “critical period.” This is the moment in development when
the embryo is first complete in all its parts. In a rabbit it is after some fifteen
days out of a total gestation of thirty; in a human being in the seventh week of
pregnancy, out of the total of nine months. With birth at this period the
milk-nutrition was initiated. In
this amylopsin is not of any use, and can be dispensed with. When, as she did, Nature prolonged the
gestation, in order to bring the young into the world in a more perfect form,
she deferred in so doing more and more the start of the milk-nutrition. In prolonging the gestation, she forgot,
or omitted to introduce, amylopsin at an earlier period and not the “unconscious
memory” remained that it was not needed until the milk-period had passed. Consequently there is an absence of
amylopsin during all fœtal life.
Usually the difficulties caused by this can be surmounted if the mother
produce sufficient amylopsin, but from the seventh week of gestation pregnancy
is a sorry business, owing to
28
This absence of amylopsin in
the fœtus. To this day, to my
knowledge, such is the “conservatism” of the medical profession, amylopsin has
not been employed as an injection in any case of threatened eclampsia.* But in cancer it has for some years past
been used along with trypsin, and it has never failed to perform its task of
removing the bad symptoms. The
first case in which it was injected, in 1906, was that of a very distinguished
artist and art-critic, who was suffering from an advanced cancer, recurrent
after three operations. I had
previously told his physician—a
How the term “tryspin treatment” came to find its
*This is a very remarkable fact. To many physicians of both sexes the writer has explained the scientific reasons for concluding that the source of eclampsia was to be sought and found in an absence or deficiency of amylopsin in the maternal blood, to be remedied, of course, by hypodermic or intramuscular injections of genuine amylopsin of 2,000 units of activity per cubic centimetre. So far as he is aware, though more than one of these has expressed intentions of “trying” this scientific remedy, there is no single case of actual or threatened eclampsia, in which such injections were made. Instead thereof, the barbarous remedy of stripping the capsules of the kidneys is still often resorted to, and only recently a new device has been sug-gested seriously—to wit, amputation of the breasts.
29
way into general use is
still a mystery to me. It was, I
believe, first employed by an anonymous writer—still quite unknown to me—in the
Daily Mail, somewhere about the end
of January, 1906. It caught on, and
nothing I could do ever altered the name of the treatment. But with certain other happenings this
use of the term “trypsin treatment” was a disastrous occurrence. Since early in 1906 I have always used
the designation of “the pancreatic or enzyme treatment.” An “enzyme” is another name for a
ferment. Again and again I have
insisted upon the fact that a “trypsin treatment” of cancer was about the most
deadly remedy which could be devised.
It is impossible to estimate how many treated cases all over the world
have failed from toxæmia owing directly to this use of trypsin without abundant
amylopsin.
Particular attention may be directed to the following: The scientific
treatment of cancer or malignant disease advocated by me is not, and it never
was, a “trypsin treatment.” From
the days of its first annunciation—
30
things are in conformity
with the enzyme treatment of cancer.
Moreover, it is not suggested in this book that the injection of 60,000
genuine tryptic units and 120,000 amylolytic units in the space of four months
will cause any and every malignant tumour to shell out or encapsulate. At times a cancer may shell out on less,
as happened, for exaple, in the
31
1904 one of my main theses
has been that, just as in normal development there was an antithesis or opposite
character, of two generations—sexual and asexual respectively—so the like
antithesis obtained, of necessity, in the ferments employed by these for their
nutrition. The ferments of the
asexual generation or trophoblast were therefore the antitheses or opposites of
the pancreatic ferments, trypsin and amylopsin; and as cancer was in nature
asexual generation (trophoblast), so its ferments mush be identical with those
employed by the trophoblast of normal development. All life-processes take place through
the action of ferments, and without these there would be no life, such as we
know it. It follows from this that
the action of cancer ferments upon substances on which trypsin and amylopsin, or
normal cell-ferments, will also act, cannot be the same as that of the latter;
that is, the products of the fermentation must be different when used upon the
same sub-stratum. The proof of
this, and the answer in the affirmative to the above question, has really been
furnished quite recently by German scientific chemists. In the paper by Professor Neuberg,
already cited (p. 12), he writes that “Comprehensive investigations into unusual
ferment phenomena of tumours have been made by E. Abderhalden, with P. Rona,
A.H. Koelker, F. Medigreceanu, and L. Pincussohn. They showed that often, but not
constantly in human and animal tumours enzymes can be detected which split up
polypeptids and peptones quicker than normal cell-ferments do. In addition, it was established that
extracts of caner (die Krebssäfte) split up polypeptids in entirely atypical
fashion. While, for example,
normally cell-ferments hydrolize d-alanyl-glycyl-glycin to d-alanin and
glycyl-glycyl, tumour fluid splits it into glycocoll and d-alanyl-glycin. The pulling
32
down (Abbau) of cancer
(carcinoma) takes place thus at quite other points (Stellen) of the animo-acid
compounds that those at which all other peptolytic ferments attack.” All this is in complete accord with the
scientific foundations of the enzyme treatment of cancer, and it is exactly what
one might expect under the view of the trophoblastic or asexual nature of
cancer, advocated by me. As
Blumenthal urges, it alone, apart from all other considerations, is sufficient
to refute and render untenable the “embryonic views,” such as the Remak-Cohnheim
one. Professor Abderhalden, in
speaking of the foregoing finds, remarks that it is improbable that the atypical
pulling-down of the silk peptone is accidental, and he describes the enzymes
concerned in this al “atypical ferments of tumours.” Again, Yosimoto found that the
proteolytic autolysis (albuminous self-digestion) of cancerous liver was much
increased over the normal, not only in the tumour portion, but in those free
from tumour. Neuberg, studying the
like self-digestion of liver-cancer, discovered a characteristic produce—fiz.,
reducing pentose, which in the self-digestion of normal liver is not
produced.
In the Third (and latest) Report of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund
(1908) the word “ferment” occurs but twice in its 440 pages. Dr. W. Cramer writes (p. 433): “The
effect which a growing tumour produces on a normal organism* is a problem of
nutrition similar to the growth of a fœtus in a pregnant animal. It cannot be explained by attributing to
a cancer-cell the formation of pathogenic substances of a hypothetical nature,
such as a ‘cancer ferment,’ or a ‘cancer toxin.’” The reader will not how this is rendered
in the Introduction to the Report by the Editor: “Dr. Cramer’s paper shows
how
*A “normal position” is here understood to mean a rat inoculated with a malignant tumour.
33
precise bio-chemical methods
can now be applied to the study of the growth of cancer, and brings new and
exact information as to the nature of the relations existing between the tumour
and the animal bearing it. The
effect which a growing tumour produces upon a normal organism is the problem of
nutrition similar to the growth of a fœtus in a pregnant animal; it cannot be explained by assuming the
formation of pathogenic ‘cancer ferments’ or ‘cancer toxins.’” In the foregoing the italics are mine,
and they are introduced to draw attention to the method of citing the “new and
exact information.”
As demonstrating the exact opposite of this information, one may cite the
following recent words of Blumenthal and Neuberg: “Moreover, we consider the
question of the abnormal enzymatic (ferment) processes in tumours as completely
cleared up, since it has also been answered in a positive sense by Abderhalden
and his colleagues, working with quite other methods.” The original German of this passage will
be found in a short article by Blumenthal
and Neuberg on “Proteolytische Fermente der Krebszelle,” in 1909; also to
the same author, in Zeitschr. F.
Kresborchung, vol. X., 1910; and to Blumenthal, “Ergebnisse der
Physiologie,” “Die chemische Vorgäange bei der Krebskrankeit,” pp. 363-428,
1910; separate edition of the memoir (Asher-Spiro, Berlin),
1910.
In a review of Bainbridge’s report, the Lancet (October 9, 1909, p.
1079) states: “A negative
result of this kind has the great value we have indicated, in that the medical
profession have before them chapter and verse
34
for their placing no faith
in trypsin, and none in persons who persist in advocating its use by repeating
stories of alleged ‘cures’ when, as a matter of fact, the patients referred to
have been proved to have died from the disease.” Scientifically, it is not necessary to
do more than insist on the fallacy of lying any stress at all upon “a negative
result,” and in the present instance this happens to be specially true, for “the
medical profession,” if it were “placing faith” in the evidences furnished by
Bainbridge’s report, would find it
now difficult, but impossible, to cite from it any real scientific grounds for
this. The “chapter” may be found
easily, for the “scientific report” has been scattered broadcast, but the
“verse” is a present blank. In the
chemical experiment the observer must satisfy, not only himself concerning his
reagents, but also the requirements of science.
As Bainbridge employed five different strengths of trypsin injections, of
which the strongest is stated to have been six time the strength of the weakest,
and as he furnished no particulars to show in which cases each of these
injections had been employed, or the total number and sizes of the doses in a
given time, the “chapter and verse” of his evidence can carry no sort of
conviction to any logical mind. The
reference to patients “proved to have died from the disease” in the citation
above is, of course, to the single case of Miss K. H., which has never once been
cited by me as a “cure,” or even believed for a moment to have been
“cured.” This case (No. 7 of
Bainbridge’s report) furnishes a far more useful and instructive object-lesson
of the value of surgery in cancer than of trypsin and
amylopsin.
The following is the history of this case as give on pp. 20 and 21 of
Bainbridge’s report: “Duration of disease previous to enzyme treatment: about
three
35
years. Previous treatment: removal of growth
from left breast,
Dr. Morton’s treatment with 5 to 10 minims of “trypsin” thrice weekly
during some six months in 1906 may be dismissed as no treatment at all. I doubt whether with the strengths then
on sale, which no endeavours of mine could persuade manufacturers to increase,
the patient received in all more than one of the doses mentioned in this
book—viz., 1,000 tryptic units.
According to Bainbridge’s report, and its author, as the surgeon
concerned, perhaps knows the facts
better than any anonymous critic, the order of events was the very opposite of
that usually assumed. The knife
failed twice before Bainbridge evoked the ferments. There might, indeed, be some point, if
little truth, in the statement here referred to, had the patient derived any
benefit at all from “submission to the knife.”
Looking back over the field of my researches since
the
36
summer of 1888, twenty-three
years ago, at various phases of the journey, it was all a lonely
pilgrimage
“Towards the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet,
Nor any path to follow.”
New problems, entailing
fresh, patient labours, constantly arose, and the solutions of these brought,
invariable, new surprise in their train.
The start of the work was the discovery of a transient nervous apparatus
in the development of a fish; this was the one end of the slender thread. Its unravelling was always intensely
interesting and absorbing to the observer, and the thread went on, and on, and
on, always continuously, unlike any other thread of research known to me in the
whole history of embryology. Then,
at last, the other end came in sight, twenty-five years after the observer first
began, in Semper’s old research institute in the ancient
The first piece of work upon the thread occupied some five or six years;
for that time was required to work out, night after night, and put together the
results, which are recorded, with eight plates, in the memoir upon “The History
of a Transient Nervous Apparatus” (1896).
This was clearly an asexual structure, the work upon it a prelude to the
cancer investigations. There are,
indeed, published researches extant, such as Professor A. Goette’s immense
monograph upon the development of a toad, Bombinator, which took a longer time;
but, so far as I know the literature of embryology, there is no other
embryological monograph which covers so long a period of development, or span of
time, some seventeen
37
months, as this. It is nearly twice the length of time of
a human pregnancy from conception to birth.
But this is not the place to write a history of a quarter of a century’s
researches in embryology. Suffice
it to say that the chain of researches is now a complete one, every link has
been tested, and no flaw discovered.
As one outcome of this systematic investigation, a single case of
successful cure of malignant disease, quite apart from others recorded in the
published literature, is brought before the whole work, and the invitation is
give that any test of its truth be applied to it. All the methods employed are published
in full. The remedies suggested and
the modes of using them may be rejected or ignored; but the truth, if scientific
truth have any place at all in this world, must be admitted. The facts are: that in a case of
malignant disease, termed by the pathologists a “round-celled sarcoma”—named by
me, scientifically, irresponsible trophoblast or asexual generation—which was
recurrent and inoperable after two extensive surgical operations upon it; the
remains of the tumour, under the influence of the all-powerful ferments, trypsin
and amylopsin, finally shelled out, leaving the patient free from all trace of
malignant disease, and, in fact, “cured.”
I ask that these scientific fact, which cannot be denied, be admitted,
and that with this the tardy acknowledgment be made, that when, on January
20,1905, a scientific man, whose sole object was the revelation of the truths of
Nature, stated publicly that “in the secretion of that important digestive
gland, the pancreas,” Nature had provided a potent remedy for cancer: what he
then said was nothing more than scientific truth, which is the greatest of all
truth.
This, Nature’s remedy, may be taken or left; but the truth may be denied
no longer. It is beyond my
power
38
to prevent mankind, in happy
ignorance of what the cycle of life really is, from awaiting some other solution
of the problems. In doing this
futile thing mankind may watch, and hope, and pray, until the crack of doom; but
all in vain. Even if the scientific
solution were to dawn upon official research, it could—in this universe, at all
events, and as it is constituted—be none other than that offered by Nature! No denial can any longer have the
smallest value against the supreme truth, that when properly—that is
scientifically-applied, the pancreatic ferments, trypsin and amylopsin, being
the most powder things in the whole range of organic nature, are efficacious
agents against cancer.
At the present time science and scientific research are not things to be
made light of, to be scoffed at and jeered at in the market-place, or to be
ignored. With the publication of
the facts contained in this book, the responsibility is shifted to other
shoulders than those of the scientific observer. All I ask is, that these truths of
Nature, which she has given as a revelation of boundless and priceless import to
a world which was not ready for them—that these shall not be denied, but be
received reverently as what they are—true facts of Nature. Cancer is a natural phenomenon, not a
disease; although it may bring disease in its train. Its treatment—that of a natural
phenomenon—has been committed legally, logically, rationally, and scientifically
not to the hands of the scientific observer, who has discovered its origin and
nature. It is the business of the
scientific observer, not that of the medical man or surgeon, to study and
elucidate natural phenomena. Let
the truth be acknowledged
39
for its own sake. As the writer is “not even a medical
practitioner,” the adoption of the treatment in all or any cases of cancer is
not compulsory; but it may not for a moment be imagined that scientifically it
is intended to make good the failures of surgery.*
The statement made in this book that cancer is a natural phenomenon, not
a disease is unassailable. It rests
upon scientific evidences, which are impregnable against all attacks; but it may
be questioned whether civilized mankind as a whole has any real conceptions of
the nature of natural phenomena in general. Some are beneficent. The sun rises, and its heat and light
render this earth habitable to man.
Owing to natural phenomena, the seasons return in orderly fashion,
bringing, among other things, spring, with its fresh, new green; summer, with
its wealth of flower; and autumn, with its harvest of fruit and grain. Other natural phenomenon are
maleficent—malignant. The volcano,
also a natural phenomenon, has in the past buried or destroyed countless cities;
and even in our own day this has happened.
Some naturalists have been of opinion that the fossil remains of
innumerable animals, now extinct—often found in great multitudes heaped
together-owed their present existence, as imperfect records of past events, to
catastrophes which were also
*While for the sake of humanity the enzyme treatment may be
refused to no case of cancer, recurrent after one or more operation, if such
cases fail, from the point of view of pure science, they may not be regarded and
cited as “test cases”; for in them there always lies the possible source of
error of experiment of previous operative interference. With a positive result, as in the
40
natural phenomena. Last, cancer, with all its malignancy—a
thing which laughs to scorn the impotence of the surgeon’s knife, which yearly
claims its thousands upon thousands of human victims *--is at its scientific
basis only a maleficent natural phenomenon, such as these. We come into being and exist as human
beings because of beneficent natural phenomena, and as human beings we continue,
for a span of time, to subsist, in spite of maleficent natural phenomena. The course of some natural phenomena is
unalterable by human agency; others, again, by a knowledge of the working of
Nature, of science, can have their maleficent action stemmed and averted; and,
as a scientific man, I affirm that cancer belongs to the category of
these.
To those, surgeons and others, who have not, like the writer, foolishly
devoted their lives to scientific research and experiment, but wisely to more
mundane pursuits—such as the acquirement of wealth—let the following warnings be
uttered: “If you wish to set up what you term ‘test cases,’ pray let them be
such as shall fulfil in every way the requirements of science. Do not vitiate your experiments from the
very start, as has happened, by choosing some 66 per cent. Of the cases, in
which there lay the pernicious ‘error of experiment’ of previous surgical
operation, once or several times over.
Remember also that if your cases be chosen rightly—that is,
scientifically—even then there remain the reagents employed, and how used. Do not forget that in this, as in every
scientific chemical experiment, the observer must not only satisfy himself
regarding his reagents, but be prepared,
*On the basis of the present population of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and
41
if called upon to do so, to
produce scientific evidences concerning their nature and composition.* Above all, do not for a moment imagine
that you ‘have tried trypsin in cancer, and have found it useless,’ when to all
intents and purposes you might just as well have been testing the effects of a
solution of glycerine and water. Do
not think it is ‘science’ to perform mere elementary qualitative experiments
upon your injections, showing that they have some action upon starch and upon
white of egg. Lastly, under the
erroneous idea that it thereby makes the thing a scientific document, do not
publish any account of your negative experiments with trypsin and amylopsin with
the sub-title, “A Scientific Report,’ unless the document in question fulfil,
like my scientific memoirs and like this book, in all respects the requirements of
science.”
The greatest exaction of science is truth. This is why the expression, “scientific
truth,” is so far-reaching and invincible.
In the opening passages of this Introduction two points were referred to,
and to them at its close I return.
“There is,” said Tyndall, in somewhat different words, “in the true
scientific man a desire far greater than to have his conclusions ‘generally
accepted’: it is the ardent wish to see them verified in fact.” Again, it was
pointed out that the problems of the origin, nature, etc., of cancer formed but
a special case, a side-issue, of the application of a general principle. This general principle, revealed by my
researches of more than twenty years, was of an antithetic alternation of
generations with a continuity of germ-cells from generation to generation as the
basis of the cycle of life. This,
the law of animal development, waw
what during many years of research Carl Ernst von Baer groped for, but in
vain. In this
*Apparently this rule of science has no applications in official cancer research.
42
connection a confession on
p. 451 of von Baer’s “Autobiography” (second edition, 1886) is of great
interest. Here, in a review of his
own published embryological researches, he writes: “Und der Generations-Weschsel
schleuderte
For the past century, to go no farther back innumerable attempts have
been made—all in vain—to solve the problems of cancer, or malignant
disease. In Dr. Jacob Wolff’s
monumental work, “Die Lehre
43
von der Krebskrankheir,”
vol. i., the list of investigators given includes more than a thousand names—to
be exact 1,004. Why, of these, did
1,003 fail, and but a single on succeed?
The answer to this is not far to seek, and, indeed, it is contained in
the true solution which is detailed in the following pages. All scientific research, to be
successful in the end and enduring, must start in correct principles, or, at any
rate, not in false ones. Until in
recent years a practical embryologist of long-working experience applied the
general principle of an antithetic alternation of generations to the problem of
cancer, it had always been attacked from the standpoints of three embryological
dogmas, which have this in common—that they are false, though “generally
accepted.” These are epigenesis, or
direct building-up of the embryo from the products of the fertilized egg (Harvey
and Wolff); somatic origin of germ-cells, as “chips” of the “old block” (Huxley); and recapitulation in
development, as maintained by
Haeckel and his followers. If these
doctrines, which are pretty “generally accepted,” were true, if they contained a
particle of truth, the solutions of the problems of cancer would follow
inevitably out of them. If they
were false, as they are, their applications to cancer could but lead to failure,
and this has been the case. Years
ago, as opposed to these dogmas and as scientifically true, I set up, on grounds
of observation, the three doctrines of evolution with predestination (Weismann
anticipating me in this), a morphological continuity of germ-cells, and an
antithetic alternation of generations.
This trilogy of doctrines is in reality one and indivisible. If this trilogy were scientifically
correct, its application to the problems of cancer must end in their resolution,
and this has, in fact, happened. It
would not have
44
taken place under any
constitution of the visible universe other than the one which includes this
general principle of an antithetic alternation of generations as the basis of
the cycle of life of animals and plants.
It would have been lacking, were this general principle untrue, had my
researches since 1888 been false as well as “heterodox.” Were direct development or epigenesis,
somatic origin of germ-cells, etc.
Nature’s method, cancer would not, could not, have been liquefied by
injections of pancreatic ferments in London, New York, Berlin, and York; no
malignant tumours at all would have disappeared under the influence of
injections of pancreatic ferments; and Lambelle’s ex-pensioned drummer would
long ago have perished miserably from the ravages of malignant disease, as
countless other cases still do every day, week, and year all over this
earth. It follows that the current
dogmas of direct development or epigenesis, set up in the eighteenth century by
the researches of Harvey and Caspar Friedrich Wolff, somatic origin of
germ-cells, and recapitulation in development which are taught in all, or almost
all, the Universities of the civilized world, and which are supposed to underlie
the sciences of embryology, zoology, and anatomy, not to mention physiology and
pathology, etc.—that these are false, even though they be “orthodox.” Therefore, the general principle of an
antithetic alternation of generations has not only resulted in the overthrow and
rout of cancer, but its decisive success in this has demonstrated how necessary
it is, in the interest of truth itself, that without further delay—unless
scientific truth have ceased to be a requirement of science—the scientific house
be put in order, the false dogmas be cast out and rejected as worthless, and the
Golden Rule of an antithetic alternation of generations be set up as a
fundamental scientific general principle of the sciences
of
45
life—embryology, biology,
etc. Orthodoxy will not in science
render false doctrines true, and Tyndall’s words become a mere mockery and
delusion unless they apply to the embryologist and biologist, as well as to the
physicist and chemist.
Twenty years ago my general principle—an antithetic alternation of
generations with a continuity of germ-cells from generation to generation as the
basis of the cycle of life—was almost within my grasp; that is, had almost been
established by facts of observation.
After a few more years of patient research this was so—at last. Those, and those only, who know and
appreciate the history of the growth of human scientific knowledge—“The Growth
of Truth” (Osler) can realize the true import of this. Two of the greatest scientific
investigators of the nineteenth century were Hermann von Helmholtz and Louis
Pasteur. As investigator they were
incomparable, beyond comparison with others or with each other. What the latter thought about general
principles in scientific research is cited, else in this book, and it may be
found in full in his live, “La Vie de Pasteur,” written by Vallery-Radot. The illustrious physicist and
physiologist, Hermann von Helmholtz, wrote his view in the following beautiful
lines: “When, from a correct general principle, one develops the conclusions in
special case of its application, new surprises, for which one was not previously
prepared, always make their appearance.
And since the conclusions unfold, not according to the author’s caprice,
but after their own laws, it has been made the impression upon me that really it
was not my own work which I wrote down, but merely the work of
another.”*
* “Wenn man aus einem richtigen Allgemeinen Principe die Folgerungen in den einzelnen Fällen seiner Anwendung für sich entwickelt, so kommen immer neue Überraschungen zum Vor-
46
The general principle of an antithetic alternation of generations has now
been applied to the special case of the natural phenomenon knows as “cancer,” or
“malignant disease.” Even though
this had been in the
(footnotes from page 46)
schein, auf die man vorher nicht gefasst war. Und da sich die Folgerungen nicht nach der Willkür des Autor, sondern nach ihren eigenen Gesetze entwickeln, so hat es mir oft den Eindruck gemacht, als wäre es gar nicht meine eigene Arbeit, die ich niederschreibe, sondern als ob ich nur die Arbeit eines Anderen neiderschriebe” (From a letter written to Sir William Thomson [Lord Kelvin] in 1860).
47
PART 1
THE
PROBLEMS OF CANCER
CHAPTER
1
EMBRYOLOGICAL ASPECTS AND
ETIOLOGY OF CARCINOMA*
At a time when so much is
being attempted in the investigation of the problem of the nature of cancer, it
may appear presumptuous on the part of an embryologist to express opinions and
conclusions regarding this grave question.
It has long been a subject of earnest research by physicians and
pathologists, who naturally are familiar with actual facts and finds concerning
carcinoma, foreign to the embryologist.
But hitherto the physician and the surgeon, the pathologist and the
gynæcologist, have failed utterly to establish anything concerning the etiology
of cancer, and without the intervention of the embryologist success may be as
distant in the future as in the past.
As indicated by the above title, the present chapter is intended to deal
with aspects of carcinoma as they strike an embryologist, and not every
embryologist, but one particular investigator. At the outset it may be asked, “Is the
etiology of carcinoma an embryological problem?” As the thing itself and its
manifestations demonstrably fall within the province of the surgeon and the
pathologist, for it confronts them almost daily, it is possibly
not
*The Lancet,
48
very clear why the problem
of the nature of cancer should be an embryological one at all. It is a disease carrying with it death
and destruction. On the other hand,
the problems of the embryologist, as generally understood, treat not of disease,
but of the blossoming-forth of life itself—of the phenomena which culminate in
the appearance of new living beings.
Death and decay would seem to be things of which, from his researches,
the embryologist might be expected to obtain no practical knowledge. He is supposed to be concerned with “das
Werden,” while das Vergehen” is beyond the scope of his researches. Would that it were so! Unless he shut his eyes to plain facts,
“das Vergehen” in the midst of das Werden”—death in budding life itself—is
continually before him.
The conviction impressed upon the writer’s mind from many years devoted
to the study of the mode of the development of the higher animals, the
vertebrata, is that everywhere and at any point atrophy and death and
degeneration of cell, of organs, of organism, of embryos themselves, are among
the commonest phenomena under the eyes of the embryologist. His textbooks, even his published
researches, may be silent of these; for, as a rule, he believes himself to be
concerned solely with the coming-into-being; and the opposite aspect, the
decline of life, he leaves severely alone.
It is not, in his tacit opinion, a theme of the science of
embryology. This view of the
problems of the science has for many years failed to commend itself to the
writer, and in his own researches he has endeavoured to take account of
everything happening and capable of being observed during the developmental
cycle, whether progressive or retrogressive.
49
The manifestations of life present themselves under the headings of
either form and structure, or function. Embryological research deals
largely with form and structure, or, more exactly, with the coming about of
these. And as, according to the
testimony of pathologist, cancer, when it appears, is something new to the
organism,--a neoplasm, a foreign thing, not growing and functioning after the
manner of the individual containing it, increasing by cell-division after
unknown laws, which appear to defy all law, carrying with it widespread eroding
destruction, only comparable to that dealt out by some parasites—the phenomena
of cancer would have analogies at least to many such lying within the domain of
the embryologist. Cancer is
something with a beginning; it increases like a developing embryonic germ by
cell-division; it invades territory at first foreign to it, and it differs only
from a parasitic organism in the fact that its mode of reproduction is what may
be defined as asexual. And thus,
while as a rule its cycle is limited to the individual harbouring it, carcinoma
is something with for itself an indefinite life-cycle, which is only bounded by
the life of its host, but which cannot be carried directly over, by germs or
fertilized gametes, to another organism.*
That the resemblance between the life-cycle of a cancer and that of a
higher animal should be incomplete is natural; for the former is an abnormal
product, and it is in the nature of such to differ in some or other important
details from the typical or normal.
The problem of the nature of cancer has long been before the writer in
his investigations; in fact, ever since
*It has, however, been shown by
50
he learnt, from the
researches of Welms* and other, that it had been encountered occasionally along
with those curious tumours, the “dermoid cysts” of ovary or testis—the
“embryomata,” or rudimentary embryos of Wilms. The latter speaks of this occasional
connection † of the two—it had in 1902, according to Wilms, been observed some
nine times—as a remarkable fact (p. 86), in that, in an organism of one or two
years of age, the development of carcinoma can happen. As this relates to the presumed age of
the embryoma, and not to that of the individual harbouring the latter, the
validity of the conclusion is not apparent. On his part the writer must reject
it. For the past two year, from
time to time, in researches upon the germ-cells, observations have been made
which appeared to have bearings upon the nature of carcinoma. ‡ This period may not seem a long one; but beyond it life the
investigations of other twelve years, without which the standpoint of to-day
would be an impossibility. If,
therefore, no study of cancers underlie the present chapter, the approach of the
problem is not a sudden one; but it as been preceded by prolonged observation,
and, moreover, animal life is the same whether it be that of a hyroid polype
upon a shell of the seashore, or that of a cancer within an individual of the
human race.
The immediate cause of the present writing was as follows: In a recent paper, dealing with the
understudy theory of heredity, in an altogether different
connection,
* Wilms, Max, “Über die Dermoidcysten und Teratome,”
etc. in Deutsches Archiv f. klin. Med.,
v. 55,1895, pp. 1-108, Pl. 3; also Martin, “die Krankheiten des
Eierstockes,” etc., Leppzic, 1899, pp. 576-614.
† Chorio-epithelioma, even in the male, and usually in the testis, has,
of recent years, turned out to be not uncommon.
‡ Some years ago, at Liverpool, Mr. H. J. Styles, F.R.C.S., published figures of all the supposed “cancer-parasites,” and showed what they really wee. All of these have been seen by the writer in degenerating germ-cells of development.
51
a few comments had been
written down upon the mode of growth exhibited by certain organisms, and a
comparison drawn between this and the pernicious growth of the human chorion in
certain cases.* And it was not until long after the proof had been returned that
it was seen how in this comparison the key to the problem of the nature of
cancer had been given away. If the pernicious growth of the chorion be really
carcinomatous-and it is recognized†
as such by pathologists under the names of
malignant
placentoma, deciduoma, chorio-epithelioma or destructive placental
polyp‡-the nature of cancer is
clear as the light of day. And it has seemed desirable to offer the present
essay, in order that at least a warning note might thereby be uttered, and an
earnest attempt made to point to the futility of investigation in the direction
of a cul-de-sac, such as the probable one of cancer, as due t o unicellular
organisms.
In the following, the facts concerning carcinoma,
as
*The passage in question is as
follows : “It should be mentioned that De Vries and Weisman have already
notedthe resemblance in mode of growth between the flowering plant and the
colonial hydrozoa. Many of the latter also possess the indefinite unrestricted
power of growth so characteristic of the aporophyte of the higher plants. As a
rule the asexual generations of the higher animals do not exhibit this faculty.
They rarely obtain a chance of showing it, for it is their usual fate to undergo
early suppression by the sexual generation. When, as happens sometimes in cases
of abortion in the human subject, the embryo is got rid of prior to the critical
period, or at any rate, before the asexual generation has here been suppressed,
the latter may go on growing indefinitely if left in the uterus. I refer, of
course, to the unrestricted and pernicious growth of the chorion, when left in
the womb after an abortion.” (Transactions of the Botanical Society, Edinburgh,
1902, pp. 140-141).
† The carcinomatous character of the pernicious growth
of the chorion was first clearly recognized by Professor F. Marchand in
1895.
‡ Ziegler, Ernst, Allgemeine Pathologie, v.11, p. 488 10
Aufl, 1901.
52
established by pathological
research, such as those given in the latest edition of Ziegler’s “Pathologie,”
will be taken for granted. It will be assumed that at the basis there is
morphologically but one form of cancer, no matter how different it may appear to
be in diverse localities.
A cancer of the skin is naturally different from one of the uterus or
liver, for it grows and increases under other conditions. Ziegler, for one,
adduces reasons against the supposed origin of cancer from some effects of
unicellular organisms, and to his objections something more can be added. It is
not in the nature of parasitic maladies to lead to cellular increase, such as is
characteristic of cancer ; and, while the phenomena of destruction possibly
present themselves prominently to the surgeon and the pathologist, those of
indefinite unrestricted cellular increase and multiplication most impress the
embryologist. And if the nature of cancer to be brought out in the course of the
following be the true one, any further one is a
superfluity.
The conclusions are based chiefly, but not entirely, upon researches in
Elasmobranch fishes,* and to any but vertebrate embryologists there might appear
to be no warrant for applying results obtained in animals so low down in the
scale to man himself. But the broad outlines, the laws, and even most of the
details of the development, are the same in man as I the fishes, and the
life-cycle of the former can be interpreted in terms of that of the latter. The
starting-point goes back more than two years to the beginning of researches upon
germ-cells, and with these to the earlier work of Wilms upon the embryolomata.
The results of the work, and of previous necessary
* Also upon researches in mammalian development, especially upon the
trophoblast (larva or phorozoon, asexual generation), allantoic placenta,
critical period, and span of gestation.
53
inquiries , dating as long
ago as 1888 cannot be given at all in detail here. A general survey of the chief
conclusions will be found in “Heredity and the Epicycle of he Germ-Cells.”* The
nature of cancer is really known, but not recognized. Failure to perceive the
true nature of carcinoma has hitherto been due to one simple fact : the views
generally-universally- held regarding the course of the cycle of development
from egg to egg are erroneous.
Were an embryologist of to-day asked what in outline was the cycle of
development in one of the higher forms-say a fish, chick or mammal- he would
probably be amazed at the question. “The hen lays the egg, the latter gives
birth to a new hen,” and so, as Kleinenberg once remarked of something else,
under the eyes of the delighted and astonished spectator, the cycle is
completed. This supposed cycle has never really been witnessed, for the very
good reason that it does not exist. The hen neither produces the egg, nor is it
the chief, nor even the immediate task of the latter to give rise to a new hen.
As the establishment of this and of the true life-cycle have filled in the
working hours of the writer during many years, it may be obvious that the
production of the evidences must be beyond the limits of this book. Indeed, no
attempt will be made to prove here what the true life-cycle is, and wherein its
details lie ; the results of previous work will be assumed, and for fuller
information the reader may be referred to the original
memoirs.
In the higher animals-the Metazoa-what is termed “direct development”
does not, and cannot exist. It has been found that the cycle of animal
development, even of the highest forms, resembles very closely that
of
* Biologisches Centralblatt,
1902, vol. xxii., pp. 321-328, 353-360, and 398-408.
54
a fern or a flowering plant.
In the line from the egg to the egg there are two generations-an asexual form,
and one, which, as it is the bearer of sexual organs, is spoken of as the sexual
generation. Under prevailing views of development the line of ancestry from
generation to generation is exceedingly simple-too simple, indeed, to explain
the facts ; so simple that Nature could not adopt it in practice, were she to
make the trial. It may be represented thus : egg→embryo or sexual
generation→egg→embryo, etc., the egg
producing the embryo ; the latter, when mature, forming from its own tissues new
eggs. This is undoubtedly, one of the
most impossible conceptions which ever formed part of a science.
[emphasis added by DHD Sr] The amended cycle of development and the course of
heredity are as follow : egg→trophoblast (phorozoon or
bearing animal, asexual generation)
→ primitive
germ-cell→primary
germ-cells→secondary
germ-cells→gametes, eggs or
sperms→fertilized egg.* In the line
of ancestry, as given here, a line which, apart from the asexual generation, is
one of unicellular organisms, the embryo finds no place. It arises from one of
the primary germ-cells, whose number is always a definite one-2, 4, 8, 16, 32,
etc.-and the rest enter the embryonic body to form its sexual products. A more
detailed account of this cycle will be found in “Heredity and the Epicycle of
the Germ-Cells.” The four important items in the cycle are : (1) The gametes,
egg and sperm, by whose union, to form a zygote, a new cyle is initiated ; (2)
the first product of the zygote, the phorozoon, trophoblast, or asexual
generation ; (3) the primary germ-cells, destined for future generations ; and
(4), only important to enable the completion of the cycle, the embryo or sexual
generation.
Any and every primary germ-cell, if it develop or unfold
* See Fig. 5, Chapter
V.
55
as such,
normally gives birth to an embryo, and as elsewhere indicated, the embryomata of
Wilms arise, and must do so, from such primary germ-cells. This unfolding of a
primary germ-cell is equivalent to its landing in a cul-de-sac ; its powers of
growth and increase and its life are thereby limited. The contrast between this
and the larva or asexual generation in these respects is very striking. The
latter, like the corresponding generation in plants, often possesses indefinite
unrestricted powers of growth in an apical fashion.* In many animals there is
only one apical region of growth in the asexual generation ; in the hydroid
polypes there may be many such, and Weismann and De Vries have already noted
their powers of indefinite unrestricted
growth. That which brings to a sharp and sudden close the growth of the
asexual generation, if there be but one growing point, is the cutting
off
* Of great, but hitherto
unrecognized, importance in this direction, are certain results of experimental
embryology-such as those of Driesch, Morgan, and others, upon echinoderma, and
of E.B. Wilson and others upon Amphiosus, ETC. (For a full account see
E.B. Wilson’s “The Cell,” second edition, 1900 ; or Korshelt und Heider,
“Lehrbuch der vergleichende Entwicklungsgeschichte, Allemeiner Teil,” Jena,
Gustav Fischer, 1902 ; or J.W. Jenkinson, “Experimental Embryology,” Oxford, at
the Clarendon Press, 1909). Space does not permit of a description and
discussion of these experiments. The general result is, that in certain animals,
if the cells of the early cleavage of the egg be separated, each of them will
give rise to a diminutive larva, the size of this varying directly with the size
of the original blastomere. These minute larva are often, but erroneously,
spoken of as “embryos.” Though they may go on living for a considerable time, no
case is known in which an embryo with sexual organs arises upon such a larva, as
would of course, happen in a normal development. Allied to this latter
circumstance is the fact that the in vertebrate larva obtained by embryologists
by artificial fecundation, never
give rise to the sexual form, no matter how long they may be kept living in the
laboratory. The writer has reared Echinus (sea-urchin) larva for fifteen days
without the formation of a sea-urchin upon any of them. Many other similar facts
could be mentioned.
56
of this from the organism,
its conversion into a primitive germ-cell, and the consequent formation of
primary germ-cells from this. Normally, as already stated, the further
development of a primary germ-cell results in an embryo, not in a larva (asexual
generation).
Coming now to the primary germ-cells, upon which many observations have
been made, it has elsewhere been established that their number is always a
member of the geometrical series : 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc., or 2 to the nth power where n is one of the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, etc., and that the greatest number of primary germ-cells in any embryo will
be 2n-1. Thus the total number in the common dog-fish (Scyllium Cannicula) is 128 ; in the male
smooth skate (Raja Batis), 256 : in
the female, 512 ; and the greatest number in the embryo of one of these 127 (in
Scyllium), 255 (in the male skate),
and 511 (in the female skate). But for convenience and brevity, dealing with one
form only- say, the dog-fish (Pristiurus)-of the 127 primary
germ-cells, it
never happens that all, or anything like that, reach the normal position-the
germinal ridge or nidus. Usually, at the most from 90 to 100 of them arrive
here, the remainder being found in all sorts of unusual places, where many of
them degenerate.
Here may be inserted a very brief account of some unpublished finds,
which for this reason have escaped the attentions of some observers intent upon
“annexation.” Some ten years ago my observations proved to me that in certain
dog-fishes (Scyllium and
Pristiuris)
The
single ovary of the adult female arose by the degeneration during development of
the left embryonic ovary and the persistence of the right one. There were at the
time many indications-even strong evidences-that the find in the female skate of
twice as many primary germ-cells as in the male
was a general rule for the back-boned
57
animals
or vertebrates. But the numbers appeared to work out to the same (about 128) in
both (potentially) male and female embryos of the above two dog-fishes. I was
sure in my own mind that the real number in potentially female embryos of each
was not 128, but 256. This was the position when, in 1903, the writer was
compelled to lay aside his germ-cell researches, in
order to undertake a campaign against cancer. Owing to this, the publication of
the series of germ-cell memoirs was interrupted, for no time could be found to
extend the tedious countings of germ-cells in embryos of these two dog-fishes.
This task was afterwards undertaken on my material by an able amateur microscopist-my friend W. T. Haydon, an
engineer of
The number of Elasmobranch embryos hitherto examined is several hundred,
belonging to different species, and in all these under a certain age no single
embryo has been seen, in which all the germ-cells present might be
described as normally placed. The
percentage of vagrant germ-cells varies ; it is usually from 10 to 12 per cent.
In Pristiuris, and from 25 to 30 per
cent. In Raja Batis. The places where
these occur are numerous : in the body cavity, upon the splanchnic (gut)
mesoblast, on the subintestinal veins, in kidney tubules, in the pericardium, in
the liver, in the skin, in any part of the gut epithelium, especially in the
rectum, rarely in the head or gill region, and practically always there are some
in the immediate
58
neighborhood of the stomach
in connection with the yolk-stalk. Undoubtedly, many of these germ-cells
degenerate, and few, if any, of the vagrant ones, after a certain early period,
ever find their way to the germinal nidus. The embryomata of Wilms are to be
regarded as products of such vagrant or of persistent (in ovary or testis)
primary germ-cells. But-and this is remarkable-very many such vagrant germ-cell
occur in places where embryomata are not usually encountered : thus, in the
immediate neighborhood of the stomach, in the liver, in or under the skin and in
the rectum. In nearly every embryo one of more germ-cells may be found in the
yolk-stalk, in the immediate neighborhood of the pylorus, and also in the rectal
epithelium.
It may be therefore suspected that if the germ-cells of many of these
places-e.g., liver, pylorus, rectum, etc.-ever do develop, they must give rise
to some product not of the nature of an embryo, not an “embryoma.” It is not
without interest that the common situations for the origin of cancer are the
very ones in which vagrant germ cells are usually met with : thus, in the
rectum, near the pylorus (yolk stalk), other parts of the gut, in the kidneys,
in the skin, etc. Apparently, cancer of the tongue, of the oesophagus, of the
larynx, and of the mammary gland, at first glance form exceptions, but this is
not really so. Tongue, esophagus, and larynx are products in the higher forms of
a rebuilding of the gill region ; oesophagus and mammary glands are closely
associated with the pericardium, where vagrant germ-cells (and at times
embryomatat as products of these) are often found. That cancer should arise in
what embryologically are holes and corners-places where layers and folds come
together, as in tongue and larynx-is readily explicable. Such vagrant germ-cells
are intruders in the situations
59
originally taken up by them,
and it has often been noted how they would appear to be hustled about from
pillar to post, when in the way, until they land in some corner or other.
Normally, if the paradox be allowable, the development of such a vagrant
germ-cell should result in a more or less complete twin-embryo ; but any
gradation of this down to a very rudimentary embryo may be found in practice.
Figured in Ziegler’s “Pathologie” may be seen all sorts of steps, from
complete identical twins, only abnormal in being united at some point, through
those more completely united, to others forming more or less complete embryos,
embedded within or projecting from a normal one, down to mere cysts or
absolutely rudimentary embryos.* No one has ever witnessed the development of
such a rudimentary embryo or embryoma, and probably it will never be seen ; but
the connection between them and vagrant or persistent (in ovary or testis)
primary vagrant
germ-cells is not less certain than that between an onion and the seed
originally planted. In the same way, the hypothesis that the vagrant primary
germ-cells of certain regions-thus those of the neighborhood of the
stomach and of the rectum-if they develop, give rise, not to an embryo, but to
an asexual generation of indefinite unrestricted powers of growth, can never be
converted into a fact by direct observation. It can only be inferred from the
facts. But it is a very simple explanation of all the facts, and its probability
is increased by other considerations.
But why should a vagrant vagrant germ-cell, when
developing into a cancer cell, omit or skip the formation of an embryo, and
proceed with a different portion of the life cycle?
* A much fuller series of such embryonic monstrosities, forming a very
interesting and instructive collection, will be found in Ernst Schwalbe, “Die
Morphologie der Missbildungen,” etc. Part II.,
60
One reason* is perhaps
clear. It is that the further growth of a vagrant germ-cell, or its progeny, to
form a cancer takes place at a much later period than that at which its
embryological development into a more or less complete embryo should have
happened. (The instances of cancer with embryomata, noted by Wilms, do not form
exceptions.) Moreover, it must not be forgotten that we are dealing here with
pathological conditions, with phenomena which in some glaring way do not conform
to the normal. Cancer is, more or less, an attribute of later sexual life or of
old age. For this reason one is inclined to suppose that it is not immediately
due to the further development of a vagrant vagrant germ-cell itself : that this
latter first of all divides many times, as it would do if in the germinal nidus,
and that it ultimately forms more or less normal forerunners of gametes, oocytes
or spermatocytes. These would be in abnormal situations and under abnormal
conditions, and under some stimulus, they would develop as though
parthenogenetically, but abnormally, to form a
trophoblast.
At the basis, cancer is nothing more than the production abnormally of an
asexual generation within a sexual generation. Elsewhere analogies may be seen.
In hermaphroditism we witness the conversion of the forerunners of male eggs (in
what are really females) into sperms. In certain ferns, abnormally upon the
asexual generation or fern-plant, what the botanists term “apogamy” is met
with-i.e., the appearance of a new sporophyte upon the original one ; the
formation of a sexual generation or gametophyte, and of sexual organs being
skipped. It has been urged from a botanical side that comparison between apogamy
in certain ferns and carcinoma in a mammal would not be justified, because the
former was an abnormal condition. But we are dealing with
abnormalities,
* Compare p. 20, et seq. of the
Introduction.
61
page 62 is missing and
presumed to be a picture page
a few comments had been
written down upon the mode of growth exhibited by certain organisms, and a
comparison drawn between this and the pernicious growth of the human chorion in
certain cases.* And it was not
until long after the proof had been returned that is was seen how in this
comparison the key to the problem of the nature of cancer had been given
away. If the pernicious growth of
the chorion be really carcinomatous—and it is recognized † as such by
pathologists under the names of malignant placentoma, deciduoma,
chorio-epithelioma or destructive placental ploype ‡--the nature of cancer is
clear as the light of day. And it
has seemed desirable to offer the present essay, in order that at least a
warning note might thereby be uttered, and an earnest attempt made to point to
the futility of investigation in the direction of a cul-de-sac, such as the
probable one of cancer, as due to unicellular organisms.
In the following, the facts concerning carcinoma, as*The passage in question is as follows: “It should be mentioned that De Vries and Weism
w the mammals;* the animal
lowest in the scale in which it has been recorded being the short-headed
phalanger (Belideus breviceps).† The disease is a corollary to uterine
gestation.
If the cycle of development of the higher animals really be that
concluded by the writer, if his interpretation of the phenomena of mammalian
development—which are not in the least based upon facts or factors noted in
cancer, but upon normal development here—if these be correct, the nature of
carcinoma is not hypothetical at all, but is actually known. More than one font cannot be assumed,
and it one fountain-head be shown, all other
* See. However, the closing lines of this chapter.
† Bland-Sutton. J.: “Evolution and Disease,”
63
explanations become
superfluous. In certain cases in
human development, where either no embryo arises within the chorion, or when the
embryo becomes aborted or dies prior to the suppression of the asexual
generation, the latter—the chorion—may go on gowing indefinitely, and may give
rise to what pathologists and gynæcologists recognize to be a form of cancer,
placentoma, or chorio-epithelioma (Marchand). For years now I have recognized, and, in
homologizing this structure with the larval skin of an amphibian, Hubrecht has
gone a long way in the like direction, that the human chorion represents the
main portion or whole of the asexual generation here. In certain cases, therefore, we here
witness the conversion of the chorion—i.e., of the asexual generation—into a
malignant tumour, a carcinoma.
What other proof could be asked for? That this proof of the nature of cancer
is not in agreement with accepted views of normal development cannot be set down
to the fault of the writer. He
holds, and has long maintained, such views to be false and unfounded in fact,
and moreover, it has been attempted to indicate the right way. The arguments and conclusions have been
neither refuted nor confirmed, but they have been ignored. But embryologists, are living, and have
long been existing therein, in a mental universe, where but a tithe of the facts
observed are explicable under their views.
Under the conception of development as an antithetic alternation of
generations—especially as laid down in “Hereditary and the Epicycle of the
Germ-Cells” *--all the known facts of development fit in, all are capable of
easy and natural explanation. And
the elucidation of the etiology of carcinoma follows as a natural corollary to
the law of the
*Bilogisches Centralblatt, 1902, vol. xxii., pp. 321-328, 353-360, and 398-408.
64
development cycle. The embryologist and pathologist may
ignore and neglect the plain and palpable fact, but on no theory of direct
development—a thing only existing for the higher animals in the human
imagination—can any explanation whatever of the nature of carcinoma be
advanced. This would have been
recognized clearly long ago had some embryologist taken the trouble, as the
writer has done since 1888, to trace out in full the details of the life-cycle
of one of the higher animals from egg to egg. The idea of direct development, accepted
without examination of the evidences, and the erroneous belief in the somatic
(body) origin of germ-cells, have retarded the advance of knowledge to an extent
difficult to estimate.
The nature of the argument employed in the present writing may be
summarized as follows: Granted the
facts of the origin, migrations, and history of the germ-cells of vertebrates,
and assuming the course of the life-cycle to be that previously indicated, by
hypothesis cancer is derived from vagrant primary germ-cells, which, instead of
forming a more or less complete embryo or embryoma, skip this, and give rise to
an asexual generation of indefinite unrestricted powers of growth. This is, of course, purely hypothetical,
but it becomes the true explanation by the following facts: On the one hand, as my researches have
shown, the hypothetical verirrte
Keime, or “lost germs,” of pathologists not only exist, but they are
numerously represented, and by things capable of abnormal development—the
vagrant primary germ-cells. On the
other hand, the carcinomatous nature of such an abnormal growth of an asexual
generation has been demonstrated abundantly by Marchand for the instances of the
pernicious growth of the chorion, chorio-epithelioma. If such a chorion, or trophoblast, the
representative more
65
or less complete of the
asexual generation, when robbed of its embryo, or when it fail to form such,
can—and this is established—give origin to a malignant carcinomatous tumour, the
nature of cancer is clear. The
vagrant primary germ-cell is the seed, while its fruit, sometimes represented by
an embryoma, may, on occasion, take the form of a carcinoma.
In the foregoing pages, written in 1902, cancer is spoken of as “a
disease,” for not until the researches had advanced much farther did it become
clear that cancer was a natural phenomenon. The origin of a cancer from “a vagrant
germ-cell” is urged; but on grounds, given later, it soon became necessary to
restrict this power of independent development to some few only of the vagrant
germ-cells. Its asexual nature is
clearly defined in the foregoing, and while at that time its restriction to
mammals seemed clear (although in 1895 its occurrence in some other vertebrates
had been recorded, as I found later on), below the mammals it is still anything
but common. Even now (1911) no case
is known in reptiles, and but a few instances have been found in birds, while in
many thousands of frogs examined the writer has only encountered on undoubted
case of epithelioma. Considering
its frequency in mammals, especially in man, the statement made above of its
connection with uterine gestation would still appear to have a basis of fact
under-lying it. The adaptation of
the asexual generation (trophoblast) to uterine life, shown by the occurrence of
uterine gestation, favours its abnormal development in mammals as a parasitic
cancer, as in no other class of back-boned animals. In the following chapter an attempt will
be made to show how the tumours are related among themselves, and to the
individual harbouring such a new formation.
66
CHAPTER ll
THE EMBRYOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY
OF TUMOURS
A.
THE EMBRYOLOGY OF
TUMOURS.
The etiology of tumours is
one of the darkest regions of pathology.
This is by no means due to lack of hypotheses, rather to the absence of
material basis for any of those current.
It cannot fall within the scope of the work to treat of anything like all
the different ideas at some time or other maintained.*
The writer’s purpose will be served best by referring only to views as to
the nature of pathological growths, based in some form or other upon embryology.
† One cannot read the writings of
the pathologists of the twenty-five years without being struck by the
un-
* For these, and their name
is legion, see Wolff, Jacob: “Die
Lehre von der Krebskrankheit,”
† To account for tumours the two views
most advocated at present appear to be that of “embryonic rests” or
displacements, and that of metaplasy.
Under “metaplasy” pathologists understand change in the character of
tissue-cells, even in later life.
Both are purely hypothetical, and each of them, has been described as
savouring of the miraculous. From
the modern embryological standpoint
both of them may be said to be impossibilities. Regarding “metaplasy,” as little as a
man can return to his childhood, so little an any of the cells of his body take
on embryonic characters, or change their nature. If any one small part of the body can do
this, why not grant the same superhuman power to the
whole?
67
doubted tendency on the part
of, at any rate, many of them to assign some sort or other of embryo-logical
basis to very many, if not all, tumours.
I should be the last person in the world to deprecate this, convinced as
I am that far more tumours than almost any pathologist now living possibly
imagines to be explicable embryologically have such a basis. I only differ from many pathologist in
regarding these neoplasms from an embryological standpoint which is as strange
to them as it is to the majority of embryologists. The pathologist who is an exponent of a
developmental etiology of tumours naturally endeavors to bring them under the
laws of embryology, as given in current textbooks. Since my work of many years past has
clearly brought home to me the erroneous, baseless, and impossible nature of
many of the tenets and doctrines of modern embryology—e.g., direct development,
somatic origin of germ-cells, and epigenesis—it must, of course, be equally
clear than an “embryology of tumours” founded on these can only be
fallacious.
A tumour, whether simple or complex, is a living thing, and, like
everything living, it comes gradually into being, it unfolds and manifests
itself, and in this way it has its own developmental history. This statement may appear somewhat
metaphorical, but its meaning is clear enough if it be said that very many
tumours, from the most complicated teratomata down to cancer (carcinoma and
sarcoma), are but bizarre manifestations of some portion of an animal
life-cycle. The truth of this could
not become apparent hitherto for two reasons: on the one hand, the views
maintained as to the normal cycle of development were erroneous; and, on the
other, the true science of embryology is as yet almost a terra incognita to pathologists. But, just as there is a science of
normal
68
development waiting for
recognition in our Universities, *--one whose continued neglect and exclusion
will continue to revenge itself upon mankind, as it has already done in the
past, by a corresponding retardation of priceless knowledge—so there is also (a
branch of the foregoing, and only to be understood in the light of it) an
important field of abnormal embryology, largely represented by the tumours and
their problems—a knowledge of which can only be advance by aiding and fostering
the former.
In his magnificent monograph upon tumours Borst writes eloquently of this
pathological embryology as a large and interesting region of knowledge, through
whose mystical portals we penetrate at the moment with feebly burning torches of
comprehension (Erkenntniss), but with the highest expectations. The torches here spoken of may be
identified as those of the science of normal embryology, than which there is
possibly no department of knowledge of more moment to mankind, and by whose
light alone these dark, but to mankind gravely important, regions can be
illumined adequately.
In studying the views presently advocated as to the etiology of tumours,
the following points are apparent to the embryologist. In their basis, so far as this is
embryological, they are but modification of the Remak-
*The writer seeks no such
post, although aware that in the last two years of his life the creation of such
a University Chair in London for him was the cherished wish of the late George
Bond Howes, Professor of Zoology in the Royal College of Science, South
Kensington. But it may be pointed
out that, unlike
69
Cohnheim theory of embryonic
rests,* and the descriptions and classifications of the tumours usually adopted
have no embryological groundwork whatever, proceeding, as they do, from the
simple to the complex, instead of from the most complicated teratomata—the
embryomata of Wilms—to the simple tumours represented by but one tissue—a
“connective tissue” or an epithelium. †
The “rest-theory” of Remak-Cohnheim, and their followers is a natural
corollary of epigenesis as the mode of the development; and so little as the
possibility of this mode of development can be admitted, as little can the
existence of such rest of embryonic tissues, organs, or structures, be allowed.
‡ With the rejection of the
Remak-Cohnheim theory, the modification suggested by Ribbert also falls to the
ground. If the embryo be not
gradually built up from a pile of material, as a house is erected, there can be
no superfluous bricks or other structures to ball back upon as the seed of later
tumours. Even were the development
epigenetic—and this is certainly not the case—the actual existence of such rests
has never yet been demonstrated; nor is it shown by the occasional appearance of
a supernumerary or accessory organ or structure, such as an extra kidney,
thymus,
* The theory of “embryonic rests” as the source of tumours is almost
invariably attributed to the pathologist Cohnheim. As shown in another chapter, it was
first enunciated by the embryologist Remak, and for this reason and for
clearness it will be referred to in these pages as the “Remak-Cohnheim”
theory.
† To his knowledge Wilms and C. P. White are the only authors who, like
the writer, regard the neoplasms in this “inverted” fashion. It may help to support their attitude in
this important matter to add that the writer arrived at the conclusion that, as
a rule, the tumours were approached in the wrong order, before seeing their
writings.
‡ The recognition of the impossibility of epigenesis as the mode of the
development was first made by Weismann in his “Germplasm”
(1893).
70
adrenal, ovary, or
spleen. In no embryological sense
can such be considered to represent the missing hypothetical rests. Such structures have not been known to
give rise to tumours.
Perhaps the theory of embryonic rests has undergone its most important
and most scientific alterations at the hands of Wilms,* of whose views—to some
extent, at the least—Borst† is also an exponent. Of Wilms’s researches on tumours, and
especially of the facts laid bare by them, it is not too much to say that they
are epoch-making. But of his
embryological conclusions it must be added that they are necessarily false,
because based on the premisses of an impossible
embryology.
The lost germs or rest of Remak-Cohnheim are replaced by Wilms by what he
terms “germinal shuntings” (Keimausschaltungen). Essentially, Wilm’s theory is almost as
simple as that to be here advocated, and, like the later, the hypothesis of
germ-shuntings will readily explain many tumours. The germ-shuntings of Wilms are
conceived as follows: At various
periods of the development, from the earliest to undefined later ones, prior to
the completion of the parts of the embryo, there are single cells or little
groups of such, set apart to furnish some structure of the embryo. These are often serially repeated
(metameric segmentation) in great numbers.
Some on or more of these may be shunted out of the normal connection ( ?
by what ) at almost any period of the devlopment. According to Wilms, this shunting is not
to be regarded as a displacement, for the thing shunted actually remains in the
organ to which it really
*Wilms, Max: “Die
Mischgeschwülste,” Leipzic, 1899-1903, 3 Hefte.
`† Borst, Max: “Die Lehre
von den Geschwülsten,”
71
belongs.* If this hypothetical shunting—which, to
may mind, in a normal development is physically impossible without disaster to
the developing embryo—happen in the earliest periods, it will be in connection
with cells of the cleavage, and one or more of these may become the abnormally
placed seeds of a tumour or tumours.
As an example, to be commented upon later in its true bearings, Wilms
himself found in one case not less than five embryomata or rudimentary embryos
in one ovary! These represent under
Wilms’s views five blastomeres of the cleavage. I do not know whether or not there be
any upholder of epigenetic development who is prepared to grant the subtraction
of this number of cleavage-products without utter disaster to the further
development. As will be seen anon,
the experimental researches of Driesch, Herbst, and other—Bonnet
notwithstanding—do not in the least support Wilms and Bonnet in their
extravagant suppositions. Again,
according to Wilms, if the happening be at a later period, it may concern, for
instance, a part of one or more mesoblastic somites, and, as we know the fate of
these, the structure of a tumour arising subsequently can be foretold. Thus a tumour in the region of the
vertebral may be made up of “embryonic mesenchyme,” or formative tissue,
cartilage, and bone; or of the first, or of the first and second of these. Such a tumour Wilms derives from a
“shunted” mesoblastic somite, because such a somite gives rise normally to these
tissues. Now that, for
example,
*On closer examination, contradictions in Wilm’s statements may be
found. Thus, to account for some
tumours, or parts of such, Wilms requires “germs” from mesoblastic somites, and
these may, according to him, be displaced physically into—for example—the kidney
or uterus. In this way Wilms’s
theory is seen to have very much in common with the earlier one of
Remak-Cohnheim.
72
somites may be shunted,
actually or but physiologically, from the normal connection is purely
hypothetical, and nothing of the kind has ever been witnessed. Rudimentary somites occur even in the
trunk region in some animals, but these are rudimentary, and probably always
disappear.
Wilms regards his germs as things destined in reality to form parts of
“the embryo,” and therefore as belonging to this.* Under his views cases of five embryomata
in one ovary require the shunting into this of five blastomeres during the early
development; that is to say, in this instance the original fertilized egg must
have been divided up in some way or other into at least six portions, one of
which formed a normal embryo, while the remaining five retained at lease the
potentialities of each becoming an abnormal embryo or embryoma. It is open to doubt whether any upholder
of epigenesis will admit the possibility of the course of events happening in
this way. As it would seem a new
hypothesis is needed to account for each of the five embryomata, with an
additional one to explain the continued normal character of the development
after such a shaking and shunting.
Equally formidable difficulties are furnished by the well-known instances
of multiple tumours, of various kinds, in one individual. Indeed, the doctrine of epigenesis as
the mode of the development labours under quite sufficient insuperable intrinsic
difficulties without having to bear the burdens imposed upon it by
such
* As decisive against the origin of tumours from cells, or tissues, of
the individual in which they develop, may be cited the facts that very many of
them are encapsulated from the surroundings—thus, tumours of the kidneys,
breast, and parotid; and that various observers—thus, Wilms and Borst—deny any
passage or transition of normal tissues into them. The encapsulation of many tumours is of
embryological interest, because many of the aberrant germ-cells exhibit this
feature.
73
serious tamperings with the
development , as Wilms’s theories demand.
Nor should it be forgotten that, while on the one hand Wilms speaks of an
embryonic “over-production” (!), he states that the germs of his tumours develop
in exactly those organs to whose edifice under normal circumstances they ought
to have contributed.
Underlying the doctrine of the shunted germs are the dogmas of epigenesis
and somatic origin of germ-cells.
The latter is an absolute necessity to the former. Since the founder of this (Professor
Waldeyer) has seen reason to reject his former conclusions in favour of a
morphological continuity of germ-cells, the greatest stronghold of epigenesis
has fallen.* Brilliant as are
Wilms’s actual investigations of the tumours, when regarded from the objective
embryological standpoint, the “shunted germs,” evoked to account for the facts,
are just as hypothetical and chimerical as any other “lost germs” ever conceived
of by pathologists.
Wilms’s theory, ingenious, and enticing though it be, is but a clearer
defined modification of that of embryonic rests. As with the latter, epigenesis and
hypothesis are its main bases; and as to the Remak-Cohnheim theory, the
objection can be urged that it is an unnecessary multiplication of causes. This is well illustrated by Wilms’s and
Borst’s distinctions of monogerminal and bigerminal tumours. Double monsters and certain teratomata
are regarded as bigerminal, and, placed in contrast
*See Waldeyer, W.” “Die Geschlechtszellen,” Abdruck aus dem “Handbuch der
vergleichenden und experimentellen Entwickelungsgeschichte der Wirbeltiere,” von
Dr. Oscar Hertwig, vol. i., 1903, pp. 404-405. With the “prevision,” of which Pasteur
so often spoke, on p. 405 Waldeyer writes: Die” Folgerungen aus dieser Lehre von
der Kontinuität der Geschlechtszellen sind fast unbsehbar für die gesamte
Biologie” (The consequences of this doctrine of the continuity of germ-cells are
almost incalculable for every branch of Biology).
74
with the remaining
complicated “three-layered”
tumours, which, as due to developmental abnormalities of a single embryo, are
stated to be monogerminal. As,
according to Wilms, all possible transition between the most complicated
embryomata and the simpler tumours exist, there would appear to be no grounds
for this and similar increases in the hypotheses.
Apart from its entirely hypothetical character, its lack of support in
facts of embryology, and its continual and unnecessary multiplication of causes,
the theory of germ-shuntings labours under other difficulties. It is not easy to conceive any adequate
cause for such shuntings during development, and the difficulty is greatly
increased when cases of multiple tumours in very different parts of the body,
each of which requiring one or more shuntings at some period or other, are taken
account of; for with them a normal development would appear to be quite out of
question. But, granted the
possibility of such shuntings, the real difficulties begin. What causes such a shunted germ,
ignoring all laws of differentiation, to embark upon a career of damage, riot,
and destruction of its own? To take
an instance from Wilms, typical of many such: the germ of an osteo-sarcoma will be a
cell or germs of the periosteum of some bone. Normally, like its fellows, it ought to
have contributed to the formation of that bone. Instead, thereof, at some period or
other, after lying dormant, it breaks all bounds, and proceeds on a line of
development of its own. This is
such that, unless brought to a stop by some extrinsic cause or other (operation
or death of the host), it may be the parent-cell of more progeny than all the
other bone-producing cells in the body!
In find, Wilms ascribes to his shunted germs far greater embryological
potentialities than Nature ever endowed them with. On the other
75
hand, some of the aberrant
and vagrant germ-cells described by the writer undoubtedly possess, as was once
remarked to the writer by a human anatomist, far greater potentialities for
mischief than any germs ever conceived of by pathologists.
Not only the embryonic rests and the germinal shuntings, but a host of subsidiary hypotheses—among others, those of Borst, relating to the tumours of the sacral and cerebral regions—become superfluous in the light of the much simpler theory of tumour-formation as due to—(1) the abnormal development of a persistent primary germ-cell, and (2) the bizarre pathological manifestation by this of some greater or less portion of a life-cycle. Under this view most, if not all, tumours receive a simple explanation, and under it, also, it must be manifest that previous attempts—that of Wilms excepted—to explain the tumours, in taking the simpler ones as the starting points, have really begun at the wrong end of the scale.