234 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
points
are summarized in the statement that on the average each patient received about
one-tenth of the trypsin, and one twenty-second of the amylopsin, which under
the directions (which “were rigorously carried out “) he should have received.
In the newer light of to-day, on an average, the trypsin for each case was
one-seventeenth, and the amylopsin one seventy-seventh (1/77)’ of the amount it
should have been. The only scientific facts proved in these experiments on “
the trypsin treatment of cancer” were that, examined qualitatively by their
actions* on white of egg and on starch, the Fairchild preparations then on sale
“were found to be potent.”
* Regarding this “ test” for trypsin.
one who has devoted very many years of his life to the study of the ferments,
writes me recently: “ Dr. X., for instance, has given wide publicity to a test
by which trypsin is condemned or approved by its action upon coagulated
egg-albumin, when it is a fact, known to everyone familiar with the chemistry
of the enzymes, that trypsin is of feeble action upon boiled egg-albumin, and,
indeed, it may be said naturally characteristically so. The enzymes act upon
the substances, upon which they are naturally engaged. and native coagulated albumin,
which has never received any preliminary or initial conversion by gastric
juice, is a proteid which trypsin has never learned how to act upon.”