vi THE
ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
covery appears to be received with doubt “—that even the
well-known worker on the parthenogenesis of bees, von Sicbold, 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 least 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
rubrurn, 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 animal odour, and even the chemical investigation proves the presence of
animal substances.’