246 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
truth.
After all, the naturally occurring organic compounds, as is now well known,
except in orthodox embryology, zoology, and pathology, are either laevo- or
dextro-rotatory. If the albumins of cancer be laevo rotatory, and not, as I
affirm, dextro-rotatory, then embryology as a science, as the absorbing passion
of a life of investigation, is in vain. Then trypsin and amylopsin open
left-handed locks. Then—but then only—there is some contradiction in the constitution
of the visible universe, as it has been determined by scientific men, who have
worked for the love of the labour. But if the albumins of cancer be
dextro-rotatory, and its glycogen laevo-rotatory, then let the scoffers hide
their diminished heads.
Let
trypsin and amylopsin be recognized to be what they are—the most powerful
things in the whole range of organic nature.
It
can add nothing of import to what the writer has endured during a research life
of nearly twenty-nine years for daring to proclaim new truths of science without
fear or favour, to take this further decisive step, which must either damn his
labours of the past twenty-three years, or crown them with unfading glory; for
it is my scientific conviction that that septuagenarian army surgeon of the
American Civil War, who had had the enzyme treatment for cancer himself some
four or five years ago (1906-07), spoke truly, when (December, 1908) he wrote
words to the effect that the treatment of cancer by the ferments trypsin and
amylopsin would in the end replace the knife—that this scientific treatment
would go on, and be ever more developed, after he and I had done our labours
and were at rest.