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                                      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.”

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