152 THE
ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
Pasteur
did, indeed, foresee that in his finds there was given the basis of a science
of comparative physiology. It is sad In reflect that in 1860 he wrote as
follows, and that in all the intervening years his weighty words have been
ignored by physiologists and physicians alike “ I have, in fact, set up a
theory of molecular asymmetry, one of the most important and wholly surprising
chapters of science, which opens up a new, distant, but definite horizon, for
physiology.” Before the present writing was penned, this horizon for physiology
seemed as distant as in 1860, for as a general rule the facts concerning the
asymmetrical carbon atom and the naturally occurring organic compounds find no
mention in current textbooks of modern physiology.
Who can
foresee the organization that living matter would assume, if cellulose were
laevo-rotatory, instead of being dextro - rotatory ?“ Pasteur was “ a mere
chemist, and “ not even a medical man.” He was not a biologist, though most of
his researches were biological, and he was not an embryologist. Had he been
well versed in the biology of his own day, the suggestion of a hypothetical
laevo-cellulose might have opened up an immense field to his further
researches. At the time he wrote, Hofmeister’s researches* on the
life-histories of various plants, with the main facts concerning the
alternation of generations therein observed, were already the possession of
science.** If there be a dextro
* Hofmeister,
Wilhelm Vergleichende Untersuchungen,” 1851.
** In his history of Botany “ the late Professor Julius von Sachs writes
in terms of eloquence and admiration of Hofmeister’s researches The result of these Comparative
investigations, was of such grandeur as in the realm of descriptive botany has
not since happened a second time.” He speaks of the brilliance of the grand sum
total, alternation of generations had proved itself to be the highest law of
development in plants, (cont. on pg 153)