THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER 10
compared
with Captain Lambelle’s usual dose of one thousand (1,000) tryptic units plus
two thousand (2,000) amylolytic units, 1 ampoule or 1 c.c. of each.
A
University Professor of Surgery, in support of his public statement of 1910,
that the pancreatic ferments were “futile” in cancer, recently sent me copies
of Bainbridge’s report, and an author’s copy of a paper by Sir Henry Morris,
read before the Surgical Congress, Brussels, September 21 to 25, 1908. In the
latter it is written “ He noted the reports on the use of the latter (‘ trypsin
‘), and the fact that the evidences in its favour could not be considered
conclusive.” Trypsin alone, a most deadly remedy for cancer if employed without
abundant amylopsin, is mentioned. Nothing whatever is said about the conclusive
or non-conclusive character of the failing evidences, that adequate strengths
and doses of trypsin, and any at all of amylopsin, had been employed. No doubt
the preparations were said to be “potent.” Possibly to-day Sir Henry Morris
could no more produce any scientific evidences concerning the strengths and
compositions of the injections he was referring to in iqo8 than the University
Professor, mentioned above, did do or could do when I asked him politely for
some particulars as scientific evidences of the truth of his published
statement. It ought not to be necessary, but—leider ! —it is, to remind
surgeons that in science it is a rule—as it also is in courts of justice—that
no
or pancreas glands. I have always considered the
withdrawal of this “ trypsin in powder “ as a very wise stop, but one of its
direct consequences would appear to have been the extensive employment,
especially in and about London, of a “trypsin” injection possessing at that
time rather less than ten units of tryptic strength. The eminent surgeons
mentioned above had not as a matter of fact, a ghost of an idea of the
potencies of the injections they so glibly condemned—the boxes of ampoules were
labelled with the magic word “ trypsin.”