THE
ASYMMETRY OF THE CYCLE OF LIFE
163
tively
once or oftener. As a natural treatment, it is not intended for post-operative
“inoperable “recurrent cases. Did surgeons know that cancer was in its nature
asexual generation, they would never touch a living cancer with the knife. For
it is the property of asexual generation, animal or vegetable, that it can be
subdivided indefinitely. In evidence of this fact one need only refer to all
the inoculations of cancer which, starting from one original mouse-tumour, have
been made into other mice. But one may also cite the very numerous observations
made in recent years in what has been termed “experimental embryology,” but
which would be designated more correctly “experimental pathology.” Very
numerous observations in this unnatural subject will be found in the many
volumes of the Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik, in the Journal of
Experimental Zoology, and elsewhere. Many of the observations were made
upon fertilized eggs in cleavage, and the experiments were almost as successful
in subdividing the asexual generation represented by an egg in cleavage as are
the gardener’s proceedings in making and rooting cuttings from a chrysanthemum
plant. The student of all these published experiments will notice, that the
organisms experimented upon never reverted to the normal. These experiments
proclaim the truth of the statement, that by operation a living cancer may be,
and usually is, subdivided indefinitely. Moreover, let the words of the late
Professor of Medicine in the University of Berlin, E. von Leyden, be recalled:
“A cancer reacts by increased growth to any injury, mechanical, chemical, or
thermal.” As a rule, not free from exceptions, in my experience, while
absolutely unoperated cases, if not too advanced, invariably do well under the
treatment, cases where there was previously operative interference cannot be
guaranteed, and by me are not endorsed as likely to