CRUCIAL
TEST OF THE NATURE OF CANCER 239
scientific
investigation, published, unlike many other things, with the scientific
experiments and evidences—if after this any man deny the truth of what is about
to be affirmed on the word of a scientific investigator of nearly twenty-nine
years’ standing, then it will be the time for the writer to make for himself
the crucial test ; and this shall be done, and the results published, as soon
as the necessary material has been obtained.
In
Pasteur’s lectures* one may read:
“How
can one avoid, for example, the assumption that corresponding to a
dextro-rotatory body there must be a laevo-rotatory body, now that we know the
cause of the dextro- and laevo-rotatory character? That would be to doubt that
an irregular tetrahedron had an enantiomorphous image, or that for a
right-handed screw there could be a corresponding left-handed screw, or that a
right hand was matched by a left hand. Therefore the elementary constituents of
all living matter will assume one or the other of the opposite asymmetries,
according as the mysterious life-force which causes asymmetry in natural
bodies acts in one direction or the other. Perhaps this will disclose a new
world to us. Who can foresee the organization that living matter would assume,
if cellulose were laevo-rotatory instead of being dextro-rotatory, or if the
laevo-rotatory albumins of the blood were to be replaced by dextro-rotatory
bodies? These are mysteries which call for an immense amount of work in the
future, and to-day (1860) bespeak consideration in science.”
(1)
It is, of course, a truism to state that the normal or somatic albumins are
laevo-rotatory. (2) In the pancreas gland they form for themselves the
wonderful
* Pasteur, Louis: “On the
Asymmetry of Naturally Occurring Organic Compounds,” in C. M. Richardson’s “The
Foundations of Stereo-Chemistry,” loc. cit, p. 27. New York, American
Book Company (no date).