44 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
von
der Krebskrankheit,” vol. i., the list of investigators given includes more
than a thousand names— to be exact, 1,004. Why, of these, did 1,003 fail, and
but a single one succeed ? The answer to this is not far to seek, and, indeed,
it is contained in the true solution which is detailed in the following pages.
All scientific research, to be successful in the end and enduring, must start
in correct principles, or, at any rate, not in false ones. Until in recent
years a practical embryologist of long-working experience applied the general
principle of an antithetic alternation of generations to the problem of
cancer, it had always been attacked from the standpoints of three embryological
dogmas, which have this in common—that they are false, though “generally
accepted.” These are epigenesis, or direct building-up of the embryo from the
products of the fertilized egg (Harvey and Wolff) ; somatic origin of
germ-cells, as ‘‘ chips ‘‘ of the ‘‘ old block ‘‘ (Huxley) and recapitulation
in development, as maintained by Haeckel and his followers. If these doctrines,
which are pretty “generally accepted,” were true, if they contained a particle
of truth, the solutions of the problems of cancer would follow inevitably out of
them. If they were false, as they are, their applications to cancer could but
lead to failure, and this has been the case. Years ago, as opposed to these
dogmas and as scientifically true, I set up, on grounds of observation, the
three doctrines of evolution with predestination (Weismann anticipating me in
this), a morphological continuity of germ-cells, and an antithetic alternation
of generations.
This trilogy
of doctrines is in reality one and indivisible. if this trilogy were
scientifically correct, its application to the problems of cancer must end in
their resolution, and this has, in fact, happened. It would not have