RETROSPECT
171
They
only prove that in certain cases, where as a rule the pancreatic ferments were
administered as an alternative to the Last Sacrament, these ferments, as there
exhibited, did not cure cancer, in the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital;
though on the testimony of others they did cure it in Naples, in York, and in
other places.
On
reading the thirty theses, advanced as conclusions, mostly without the
evidences, by Dr. Bainbridge, I am reminded of another phase of this cancer
problem. Some years ago two graduates of Edinburgh decided to test the asexual
(trophoblastic) nature and the germinal origin of cancer in a crucial fashion,
by transplanting living ovaries and living trophoblast into other individuals
(rabbits) of the same species. At that time I was wont to discuss these cancer
problems with a scientific man, a human anatomist, since deceased. Occasion was
taken to describe the results of these “crucial experiments.” “They published
no details of the experiments,” I said, “so that it was not possible to inquire
into the reasons for the failures; but they concluded that, because trophoblast
and ovary were not transplanted successfully and brought to grow in a new
individual of the species, therefore, cancer was not germinal in origin or
trophoblastic in nature.” The words were hardly uttered when my departed
friend, the professor of anatomy, sprang up. “No, no !“ he cried, “that will
not do. A negative result of that sort never proves anything in science.”* It
remains to add that a few years later living ovaries were transplanted
successfully in the rabbit by Drs F. FL. A. Marshall and W. A. Jolly**, and by
others, and
* Vide Appendix
H.
** Marshall, Francis H A., and Jolly, William A .: ”Results of Removal
and Transplantation of Ovaries,” in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, 1907, vol. xv.,
with two plates; also “The Nature of the Ovarian Influence upon the Uterus as
illustrated (cont. on p 172)