50 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
The
manifestations of life present themselves under the headings of either form and
structure, or function. Embryological research deals largely with form and
structure, or, more exactly, with the coming about of these. And as, according
to the testimony of pathologists, cancer, when it appears, is something new to
the organism, —a neoplasm, a foreign thing, not growing and functioning after
the manner of the individual containing it, increasing by cell-division after
unknown laws, which appear to defy all law, carrying with it widespread eroding
destruction, only comparable to that dealt out by some parasites—the phenomena
of cancer would have analogies at least to many such lying within the domain of
the embryologist. Cancer is something with a beginning it increases like a
developing embryonic germ by cell-division ; it invades territory at first
foreign to it, and it differs only from a parasitic organism in the fact that
its mode of reproduction is what may be defined as asexual. And thus, while as
a rule its cycle is limited to the individual harbouring it, carcinoma is
something with for itself an indefinite life-cycle, which is only
bounded by the life of its host, but which cannot be carried directly over, by
germs or fertilized gametes, to another organism.* That the resemblance between
the life-cycle of a cancer and that of a higher animal should be incomplete is
natural ; for the former is an abnormal product, and it is in the nature of
such to differ in some or other important details from the typical or normal.
The
problem of the nature of cancer has long been before the writer in his
investigations: in fact, ever since
* It has, however, been
shown by Hanau and Wehr to be possible to transplant
cancer from one individual—e.g., the dog—to another.