120 THE
ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
to
note, that just as cancer is found everywhere in the vertebrata, just as there
is one mode and one only of vertebrate development, so the pancreas gland and
its secretion are a common heritage of vertebrate animals.
Briefly,
as I conceive it, in normal development and in a malignant tumour the matter is
simply a question of the victory of a stronger enzyme over a weaker one, In
view of all this, the events in a malignant tumour—such as, for example, the
“heterotype” mitoses—lose much of their importance. They may still possess an
interest for the cytologist and embryologist, and even a passing one for the
pathologist. But to the physician and surgeon these abortive attempts to form
gametes cease in treatment to have any import whatsoever.
Practically
all that was sought after from my own researches regarding cancer has now come
to light. Embryologically, the problem of cancer has been to discover the
antithesis of two enzymes and in particular to find out the enzyme capacity of
destroying a weaker one, and thus of leading to the degeneration of the tumour
by simple atrophy. The whole story is but another example of that antithetic
alternation which underlies all the phenomena of living things. The solution
of the problem of the functional relation of embryo and trophoblast—how the
latter nourishes itself by an (intracellular) acid “peptic “digestion and
degenerates slowly by a pancreatic digestion—becomes at the same time the
embryological, if not the medical, resolution of the problems of malignant
neoplasms, as well as of chorio-epithelioma. As an embryologist, who is not a
physician or surgeon, my task is ended. The further applications of the
scientific and theoretical solution of the problem may safely be left in the
hands of those who know far better how to employ it. But they may not forget that in nature the degenera-