INTRODUCTION 33
down
(Abbau) of cancer (carcinoma) takes place thus at quite other points (Stellen)
of the amino-acid compounds than those at which all other peptolytic ferments
attack.” All this is in complete accord with the scientific foundations of the
enzyme treatment of cancer, and it is exactly what one might expect under the
view of the trophoblastic or asexual nature of cancer, advocated by me. As
Blumenthal urges, it alone, apart from all other considerations, is sufficient
to refute and render untenable the “embryonic views,” such as the
Remak-Cohnheim one. Professor Abderhalden, in speaking of the foregoing finds,
remarks that it is improbable that the atypical pulling-down of the silk
peptone is accidental, and he describes the enzymes concerned in this as “atypical
ferments of tumours.” Again, Yoshimoto found that the proteolytic autolysis
(albuminous self-digestion) of cancerous liver was much increased over the
normal, not only in the tumour portion, but in those free from tumour. Neuberg,
studying the like self-digestion of liver-cancer, discovered a characteristic
product—viz., reducing pentose, which in the self-digestion of normal liver is
not produced.
In
the Third (and latest) Report of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (1908) the
word “ferment” occurs but twice in its 440 pages. Dr. W. Cramer writes (p. 433): The effect which a growing tumour
produces on a normal organism* is a problem of nutrition similar to the growth
of a foetus in a pregnant animal. It cannot be explained by attributing to a
cancer-cell the formation of pathogenic substances of a hypothetical nature,
such as a ‘cancer ferment,’ or a ‘ cancer toxin.’ “ The reader will note how
this is rendered in the Introduction to the Report by the Editor: “Dr. Cramer’s
paper shows how
* A “ normal organism “ is here
understood to mean a rat inoculated with a malignant tumour.