102
THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
abortive
germ-cells, originally really destined to form embryos. In other words, in the
history of the race there has been a reduction in the number of actual normal
embryos arising, but with the persistence of such “embryonic “germ-cells
(embryonic in destiny) and the retention by these of more or less of the
“memories” needed to unfold an individual of the species. As shown two years
ago in the Lancet* a malignant tumour—and this is true of both
cancer and sarcoma—is nothing more than an irresponsible trophoblast or
chorion, the asexual generation, which in every normal development is the
forerunner of an embryo. Though not recognized, or, at all events, not stated
by them, the researches of Farmer, Moore, and Walker,** as well as those of
Bashford and Murray*** have confirmed the truth of this view, and to the hilt,
For it is an inalienable property of the trophoblast of normal development
that upon it germ-cells arise. Once these have come into existence, it is but a
* Lancet, June 21, 1902, p.
1758.
** Farmer, Moore, and Walker: “Resemblances Exhibited by
the Cells of Malignant Growths in Man and those of Normal Reproductive
Tissue,” Lancet, December 26, 1903, p. 1830.
*** “The Zoological Distribution, the Limitations in the Transmissibility,
and the Comparative Histological and Cytological Characters of Malignant New
Growths “ (Scientific Reports of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, No. 1, London,
1904). First of all, cancer was “embryonic,” and then it was not; it
arose, for the second or third time in history, from a “conjugation “ of
body-cells, and then it did not; the “ infective venereal tumour of bull-dogs”
was an infective granuloma, and then, on the very same evidences, it was a true
sarcoma, because, like the writer, Mr. Shattock said it was. It is given to
official research to change its opinions as often as it sees fit. The above
paper was put out with a great flourish as a confirmation of the work of
Farmer, Moore, and Walker, and I was assured that the original discovery could
have been made by official research. Then at a later period this confirmation
was withdrawn, for which see the Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, B,
vol. lxxvi., 1906.