30 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
way
into general use is still a mystery to me. It was, I believe, first employed by
an anonymous writer—still quite unknown to me—in the Daily Mail,
somewhere about the end of January, 1906. It caught on, and nothing I could do
ever altered the name of the treatment. But with certain other happenings this
use of the term “trypsin treatment was a disastrous occurrence. Since early in
1906 I have always used the designation of “ the pancreatic or enzyme
treatment.” An “enzyme” is another name for a ferment. Again and again I have
insisted upon the fact that a “ trypsin treatment “ of cancer was about the
most deadly remedy which could be devised. It is impossible to estimate how
many treated cases all over the world have failed from toxaemia owing directly
to this use of trypsin without abundant amylopsin.
Particular
attention may be directed to the following: The scientific treatment of cancer
or malignant disease advocated by me is not, and it never was, a “trypsin
treatment.” From the days of its first annunciation— December 13, 1904, and
January 20, 1905—it was meant to be of injections of “ the secretion of that
important digestive gland, the pancreas “—that is to say, of pancreatic
ferments, including both trypsin and amylopsin. I lay no claim whatever to have
“ discovered” such a scientific absurdity as “that trypsin dissolved glycogen
“—as water also does—or the equally ridiculous one that it was a “ property [of
trypsin] without doubt of breaking up glycogen in living tissues” (The
Hospital, January 26, 1907, p. 297). I do not, and have not, “ suggested
the use of secretin, or erepsin, or enterokinase, along with one or both of the
pancreatic ferments mentioned above, just as little as that of soap or chian
turpentine. I deal in science, not in domestic commodities. None of these