CHAPTER
V
THE
INTERLUDE OF C ANCER*
“In
preda al duol non mi lasciar !“
MAZZONI : Cavalleria
Rusticana.
WITH the results of the preceding chapter,
the writer regarded the problem as no longer one for the embryologist. It
seemed to him that any further problems of cancer were rather for comparative
physiological chemistry than for such a branch of science as embryology. This
has, indeed, turned out to be correct. As appeared in the sequel, cancer was
vulnerable by two lines of attack—embryology and stereo-chemistry. At the
present time (1911) the scientific Germans—such as Abderhalden, Blumenthal,
Neuberg, and others—are advancing slowly, but surely, along the line of stereochemistry.
That they have been anticipated in this advance is shown in the following chapters
of this book, as well as in the introduction. In the present chapter,
therefore, there is presented a connected account not merely of what is given
in preceding pages, but also of many things worked out in years now long past.
The following lines contain an attempt to show how various purely embryological
problems and their solutions bear upon the problems of cancer.
* From the Medical Record.
122