148 THE
ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
reality
that also found by me. The asymmetry of the naturally occurring organic
compounds, like that of the tartrate crystals, was the same asymmetry as that
of the two nervous systems, and the facts of both observers were based in the
fundamental verity of the asymmetrical carbon atom, first stated by van ‘t Hoff
and Le Bel.* Therefore, the researches and discoveries of Pasteur and the
writer, as fundamentally classified, are chapters, long or short, in the
science of stereo-chemistry. Behind the work, which culminated in and formed
the real scientific basis for my publication on “ The Interlude of Cancer,”
there are the researches in stereo-chemistry of Pasteur, van ‘t Hoff, Le Bel,
and Wislicenus, and the eternal truth of the asymmetrical carbon atom.
It
is not fitting on this occasion to write a treatise on the science of
stereo-chemistry or chemistry in space. It has long been recognized by
chemists—though this fundamental scientific truth would appear to have had as
little influence on physiology as upon medicine—that because the carbon atom is
asymmetrical, like the• pentavalent nitrogen one,** isomeric compounds may be
built up in more than one direction. To take a comparatively simple instance
of these isomeric compounds, the tartrate crystals of Pasteur’s researches, the
one is the looking-glass image in crystalline form of the other. The one in
solution turns the plane of polarized light to the right, is dextro-rotatory;
the other to the left, is laevo-rotatory. The ferment of the yeast organism
acts upon the laevo-tartrate; that of the mould, Penicillium, upon the
dextro-tartrate. On the other hand, the yeast
* Richardson, G. M. :“ The Foundations of
Stereo-Chemistry” Memoirs by Pasteur, van ‘t Hoff, Le Bel, and Wislicenus.
Translated and edited. New York, 1901.
** Wedekind, Edgar:
“Zur Stereochemie des fünfwertigen Stickstoffes,” Leipzig, 1890.