100 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
to
produce the whole life-cycle, with the exception of the embryonic part. In an
unmixed cancer or sarcoma there is absolutely nothing whatever of an embryo;
there is not a vestige of a somatic cell.
To
rein force their attitude several supporters of the doctrine of shunted germs
have invoked the aid of fertilized polar bodies. Every elementary student
knows these, and is aware that nowhere in the animal kingdom have they ever
been known to exhibit any potentialities worthy of the least notice. To the
embryologist versed in recent advances the theory of fertilized polar bodies,
with its allied assumptions of all sorts of embryonic rests or germinal shunts,
must seem to be one of the most absurd ideas ever enunciated in science. Like
the somatic origin and the supposed “conjugation,” this must be rejected.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the number of polar bodies formed by the
mammalian egg is far too limited to permit of their introduction into the
question. No mammal is known in which more than one polar body* arises; while,
for example, Wilms found as many as five embryomata in one ovary, and Baart de
la Faille** recorded a case of quadruplets where three of the foetuses hung as
more or less incomplete parasites from the palate of the fourth. On the present
occasion a few words more must suffice regarding the manifold embryological
aspects
* 191
I. No mammal is known in which more than one persistent polar body is
formed.
** Vide Schatz:
“ Klinische Beiträge zur Physiologic des Foetus,” Archiv’ für Gynokologie, 1900.
The original paper, by Baart de la Faille, is said to be very rare. The
specimen is described (p. 252) with some others by E. Schwalbe in
Ziegler’s “Beitrãge zur Pathologischen Anatomic,” 1904, vol. xxxvi., pp.
242-272. “Der Epignathus und seine Genese.” This case is illustrated by
an excellent figure in Schwalbe’s “Die Morphologie der Missbildungon des
Menschen und der Tiere,” part ii., Jena, Gustav Fischer, 1907, p. 147,
Fig. 139, and p. 325, Fig. 356.