28 THE ENZYME
TREATMENT OF CANCER
milk
nutrition, etc., from the standpoint of the embryologist. Certain of my
researches, published some ten years earlier, when applied to the problem,
furnished the solution with ease. One German medical man has described the
following advocacy of amylopsin in cancer as “ fantastic,” which is merely a
pious “ opinion,” not a scientific argument ; but I am willing to admit that
sometimes Nature may do things which to some people, like a certain King of
Spain, may appear to be” fantastic.” Whether it be a “fantastic “ fact or not,
genuine amylopsin always does its work in the scientific treatment of cancer.
In
the clays of long ago, in our ancestry, as in that of all mammals, and as now
happens in most marsupials, like the kangaroo, opossum, etc., birth took place
at what I have termed the “critical period.” This is the moment in development
when the embryo is first complete in all its parts. In a rabbit it is after
some fifteen days out of a total gestation of thirty; in a human being in the
seventh week of pregnancy, out of the total of nine months. With birth at this
period the milk-nutrition was initiated. In this amylopsin is not of any use,
and can be dispensed with. When, as she did, Nature prolonged the gestation,
in order to bring the young into the world in a more perfect form, she deferred
in so doing more and more the start of the milk-nutrition. In prolonging the
gestation, she forgot, or omitted to introduce, amylopsin at an earlier period,
and the “ unconscious memory” remained that it was not needed until the
milk-period had passed. Consequently there is an absence of amylopsin during
all foetal life. Usually the difficulties caused by this can be surmounted if
the mother produce sufficient amylopsin, but from the seventh week of gestation
pregnancy is a sorry business, owing to