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    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 Then at a later period this confirmation was withdrawn, for which see the Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, B, vol.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.

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