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     150                                 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER

 

digesting artificially synthesized laevo-sugars is known.” He then quotes from Professor W. J. Pope :* “It would seem to follow, as a legitimate conclusion, that while d-glucose is a valuable foodstuff, we should be incapable of digesting its enantiomorphously related isomeride l-glucose. Humanity is, therefore, composed of dextro-­men and dextro-women. And just as we ourselves would probably starve if provided with food enantio­morphously related to that to which we are accustomed, so, if our enantiomorphously related isomerides, the laevo-men, were to come among us now, at a time when we have not yet succeeded in preparing synthetically the more important foodstuffs, we should be unable to pro­vide them with the food necessary to keep them alive.” The term “enantiomorphism,” to describe the pro­perties of the isomeric compounds, was coined by Pasteur.

In Richardson’s translation of Pasteur’s two lectures one may read (p. 27) “Perhaps this will disclose a new world to us. Who can foresee the organization that living matter would assume, if cellulose were laevo-­rotatory instead of being dextro-rotatory, or if the laevo-­rotatory albumins of the blood were to be replaced by dextro-rotatory bodies ?“ With the exception of this passage, the citation from Professor Pope is the sole chemical one I have encountered, in which the possible existence of an antithetic generation is indicated. One may put his words differently, that in order to exist the leavo-men “ would need to be able, by means of fer­ments, to pull down all our food substances and to rebuild in the opposite, or enantiomorphously related, or antithetic direction. As will appear presently, un­fortunately, the hypothetical “ laevo-men “ do exist

* Pope, William J.: “Recent Advances in Stereo-Chemistry,” Nature, 1903, vol. lxviii., pp. 280-283.

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