THE RELATIONS OF
TRYPSIN AND AMYLOPSIN 225
When,
in the early days of December, 1904, the writer first came to recognize the
import of “the secretion of that important digestive gland, the pancreas,” in
the medical treatment of cancer, at once he became alive to the necessity of
keeping a scientific eye upon all the four supposed ferments described in its
secretion. The import of trypsin was quite clear from the first moment. Not
many months elapsed before the place of amylopsin could be assigned to it, and
on scientific grounds, which have never been impugned. Rightly or wrongly, but
in accordance with the scientific plan of avoiding all unnecessary
multiplication of causes, the separate existence of a milk-curdling ferment in
the pancreas gland was rejected. Finally, no function in the treatment could be
found for a fat-emulsifying enzyme. It may have its uses, but certain
discoveries known to me on this point were the work of another, and not of
myself, and they are still unpublished.
Now,
from the start it appeared very unlikely that a gland, like the pancreas gland,
should secrete four fundamentally different ferments. It was known, moreover,
that the relative amounts of these depended largely upon the kind of food upon
which the animal was fed. Nitrogenous foods led to the production of much
trypsin; a starchy diet increased the relative amount of amylopsin. These
considerations, along with the chemical facts concerning the action of
amylopsin upon starches, led the writer, in the closing months of 1906, to
certain conclusions as to the relations of trypsin and amylopsin. They were not
published, because during that and the preceding year the writer had furnished
the transparently anonymous scribes of certain journals with ample material,
not for their scientific arguments and criticisms—there never were any such—but
for their “opinions “ and powers