INTRODUCTION 45
taken
place under any constitution of the visible universe other than the one which
includes this general principle of an antithetic alternation of generations as
the basis of the cycle of life of animals and plants. It would have been
lacking, were this general principle untrue, had my researches since 1888 been
false as well as ” heterodox.” Were direct development or epigenesis, somatic
origin of germ-cells, etc., Nature’s method, cancer would not, could not, have
been liquefied by injections of pancreatic ferments in London, New York,
Berlin, and York; no malignant tumours at all would have disappeared under the
influence of injections of pancreatic ferments; and Lambelle’s ex-pensioned
drummer would long ago have perished miserably from the ravages of malignant
disease, as countless other cases still do every day, week, and year all over
this earth. It follows that the current dogmas of direct development or
epigenesis, set up in the eighteenth century by the researches of Harvey and
Casper Friedrich Wolff, somatic origin of germ-cells, and recapitulation in
development, which are taught in all, or almost all, the Universities of the
civilized world, and which are supposed to underlie the sciences of embryology,
zoology, and anatomy, not to mention physiology and pathology, etc—that these
are false, even though they be” orthodox.” Therefore, the general principle of
an antithetic alternation of generations has not only resulted in the overthrow
and rout of cancer, but its decisive success in this has demonstrated how
necessary it is, in the interests of truth itself, that without further
delay—unless scientific truth have ceased to be a requirement of science—the
scientific house be put in order, the false dogmas be cast out and rejected as
worthless, and the Golden Rule of an antithetic alternation of generations be
set up as a fundamental scientific general principle of the sciences of