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,