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                         INTRODUCTION                17

 

“normal “somatic tissues. It is in very advanced cancer cases, where the tissues have been much acted upon by the ferments and toxic products of cancer, and have thereby been injured. In this connection the finds of Yoshimoto and Neuberg concerning the auto-digestion of cancerous liver, and of portions bordering upon the cancer, are of much import.

As to the improvements in the treatment brought about by Sticker and Falk, I content myself with the record of them, and make no comment beyond saying that, in my opinion, no “trypsin-therapy” which is unaccompanied by abundant animal amylopsin will be, or can be, satis­factory in the long run.

In a long, interesting article, summing up what he considers to be our present knowledge of the chemistry of cancer, published in the “ Ergebnisse der Physiologic” (1910), Professor F. Blumenthal, of Berlin, has a reference to “ trypsin “ in cancer. Recalling his own investiga­tions with Wolff, published in 1905 (Med. Klinik, No. 5), he states that (in the test-tube!) all the tumours, five in number, were very easily attacked and pulled down by trypsin, and in a footnote he adds: “These finds were the basis of the trypsin-therapy of cancer.” In a more recent publication (German Journal of Cancer Investigation, vol. x., p. 137), he makes a similar statement in these words: “For a long time the trypsin-therapy of Beard awakened greater hope. This depends upon the fact that the cancerous tumour is quickly digested by trypsin” (in the test-tube!). On the other hand, the writer of the brief article upon cancer in the new eleventh edition* of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” assigns as

 

*  The prospectus states that “ this new edition represents the results of a fresh survey, undertaken in every department of knowledge by the most eminent authorities, up to the year 1910.’’

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