INTRODUCTION 35
for their placing no faith in trypsin, and none in persons
who persist in advocating its use by repeating stories of alleged cures’ when,
as a matter of fact, the patients referred to have been proved to have died
from the disease.” Scientifically, it is not necessary to do more than insist
on the fallacy of laying any stress at all upon “a negative result,” and in the
present instance this happens to be specially true, for ” the medical profession,”
if it were “placing faith “ in the evidences furnished by Bainbridge’s report,
would find it not difficult, but impossible, to cite from it any real
scientific grounds for this. The “chapter” may be found easily, for the
“scientific report” has been scattered broadcast, but the verse” is at present
blank. In the chemical experiment the observer must satisfy, not only himself
concerning his reagents, but also the requirements of science.
As Bainbridge employed five different
strengths of trypsin injections, of which the strongest is stated to have been
six times the strength of the weakest, and as he furnished no particulars to
show in which cases each of these injections had been employed, or the total
number and sizes of the doses in a given time, the ‘chapter and verse” of his
evidence can carry no sort of conviction to any logical mind. The reference to
patients “proved to have died from the disease” in the citation above is, of
course, to the single case of Miss K. H., which has never once been cited by me
as a “cure,” or even believed for a moment to have been “cured.” This case (No.
7 of Bainbridge’s report) furnishes, a far more useful and instructive
object-lesson of the value of surgery in cancer than of trypsin and amylopsin.
The following is the history of this
case as given on pp. 20 and 21 of Bainbridge’s report: “Duration of disease
previous to enzyme treatment: about three