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 226                               THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER

 

of ridicule. However, on January 18, 1907, the writer, in a letter to an old fellow-student, a consulting and hospital physician in London, wrote as follows: “As to trypsin and amylopsin, this is private, lest. . . . The real original ferment of the pancreas gland, in my opinion, is trypsin. Amylopsin is a -modification of trypsin. The latter probably acts by adding 2 mole­cules of hydroxyl, the other 6. Assuming T (trypsin) to be the substratum, to which these molecules are attached, the two things would be like this (here there was a rough diagram in the letter). How the trypsin molecules get slung together to form amylopsin is more than I can say; but it does not seem to me a priori probable that a gland should form four funda­mentally different ferments.” At the time, although, since “ science is prevision,” so much could be foreseen, the steps needed to establish this in fact were not obvious. Later on, from the avidity with which the leucocytes appeared to seize upon amylopsin, some further slight evidence seemed to be presenting itself, but the mystery did not clear up. Then came the paper by Dr. P. Tetens Hald,* and this contained some surprising things con­cerning the two amylopsin injections on sale. It may be stated here, that the reason why the writer had insisted that the amylopsin injection should be free from trypsin was, because it had been found impossible to persuade the manufacturers to increase the amylolytic strength of their trypsin injections without diminishing the strength of trypsin. Owing to this, it appeared that after some weeks of treatment any injection of trypsin was not as well borne as previously. Dr. Hald tested two of

   * Hald, P. Tetens “Comparative Researches on the Tryptic Strength of Different Trypsin Preparations, and on their Action on the Human Body,” in the Lancet, November 10, 1907, pp. 1371-1375.

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