250 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
question
for the embryologist, whatever difficulties it still might present to the
physician. The mammalian embryo solved the problem of cancer ages ago. The very
existence of the embryo was conditioned by the suppression, the degeneration
and death, of the asexual generation, upon which it had come into being.
Falling back on and completing his earlier work upon the critical period—upon
the change in nutrition which then invariably occurred—he was able to state
that the true problem of cancer was simply that of the antithesis of two
digestions, of two enzymes or ferments. Reference was also made to certain
results published by Professor M. M. Hartog upon the digestion in the
chick-blastoderm and in the developing frog’s egg. This observer had found in
these—which the speaker held to be asexual generations—an acid (peptic)
intracellular digestion. The digestion in normal trophoblast and in a cancer
must of necessity be of the like character, though its intracellular nature
might possibly have altered. The work of Petry had established this for several
malignant tumours in 1899. As the speaker’s work of years past had revealed,
at the critical period the embryo, complete in all its parts, began to nourish
itself by an alkaline pancreatic digestion, and with a ferment known as
trypsin. If this latter were wanting, the asexual generation—the trophoblast—might
become a malignant tumour of the deadliest description ; in its presence it
became harmless and slowly degenerated. Clearly, then, since cancer was an irresponsible
trophoblast, the ferment which brought about the degeneration of this in normal
development ought to possess potency when directed against the cells of a
malignant tumour. In his view the problem to be solved in cancer had been to
find the enzyme or ferment capable of destroying a weaker one, and thus of
leading to the degeneration of the tumour by simple atrophy. It was important
to note that just as cancer might be found anywhere in the vertebrata—just as
there was one mode, and one only, of development for all the higher animals—