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                                                    INTRODUCTION                                                                23

 

impotent to elucidate cancer, and the reasons for this failure lie on the surface.

Normally, in development, the fertilized egg, by forming trophoblast (asexual generation), swings the pendulum in the direction of dextro-albumins, laevo-starches, and l-sugars, etc., and later the primary germ-cell, by un­folding as a sexual individual or embryo (sexual genera­tion), in which new eggs or sperms arise, reverses the swing of the pendulum in the direction of the formation of laevo-albumins, dextro-sugars, d-starches, etc. Ab­normally, some primary germ-cell, originally destined to give rise to a twin identical with the individual har­bouring it, either, ab origine, does this by producing a monstrosity, or a benign tumour—an “embryoma “—or, remaining latent, anon it swings the pendulum in the opposite direction, and produces a cancer, which is tro­phoblastic (asexual) in nature—that is, is the same pro­duct as would arise normally from a fertilized egg. A cancer thus is not somatic, not embryonic, not “gametoid tissue” (Farmer, Moore, and Walker), not derived from an “embryonic rest” (Remak-Cohnheim), but it is tro­phoblast (asexual generation), the very antithesis or opposite of embryo or soma (sexual generation), embryo-logically and chemically.

When Professor Pope spoke of dextro men and women, he would, in my opinion, have done better to have used the terms “laevo-men” and “laevo-women” For while the sugars and starches of our foodstuffs are d-compounds, the nitrogenous or albuminous constituents arc l-com­pounds. This leads one also to point out to the non-chemical reader that the one generation—say the sexual one, man—does not use exclusively compounds of one rotation, 1- or d-ones, but these stereo-isomeric com­pounds form series, some of them being 1-compounds,

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