PREFACE xi
De
Dominis, Harvey, Buff on, 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 of 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 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