136 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
to
degenerate, and, as represented by the trophoblast, they do the like in a
mammal or a man.
This
leads to an inquiry as to modes of nutrition, regarding which the reader may
find much interesting information in Verworn’s “General Physiology,” and still
more in Otto von Furth’s “ Vergleichende chemische Physiologie der niederen
Tiere,” Jena, 1903. The unicellular organisms or protozoa, all asexual
generations of animals—such as invertebrate larvae, fish blastoderm, and mammalian
trophoblast, not forgetting cancer-cells— nourish themselves intracellularly
and by means of a ferment acting in slightly acid medium. On the other hand, an
extracellular digestion, by means of ferments, pancreatic enzymes, acting in
slightly acid, neutral, or alkaline media, is restricted to the sexual
generations or individuals of the higher animals (Metazoa) and man. In the
former the ferment is possibly always the like one, and it would possibly be,
to my mind, identical with the cancer-ferment, discovered by Eugen Petry in
1899, and which I have named” malignin.” The ferments of the sexual generations
being much more powerful than the intracellular one found in the forms referred
to above— being, indeed, the most powerful things in the whole range of organic
nature—it would follow that just as these higher ferments destroy in life the
living cells of malignant tumours, pulling down their albumins, so also they
must destroy the organisms—usually asexual generations, of tuberculosis,
sleeping-sickness, malaria, yellow fever, etc.—when injected into the blood by
means of hypodermal medication.* Regarded from the strictly scientific
standpoint of the embryologist, who is “not
* Now
(1911) the writer would desire to call special attention to these words,
written and published more than four years ago, but hitherto unheeded.