68 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
doubted
tendency on the part of, at any rate, many of them to assign some sort or other
of embryological basis to very many, if not all, tumours. I should be the last
person in the world to deprecate this, convinced as I am that far more tumours
than almost any pathologist now living possibly imagines to be explicable
embryo-logically have such a basis. I only differ from many pathologists in
regarding these neoplasms from an embryological standpoint which is as strange
to them as it is to the majority of embryologists. The pathologist who is an
exponent of a developmental etiology of tumours naturally endeavours to bring
them under the laws of embryology, as given in current textbooks. Since my work
of many years past has clearly brought home to me the erroneous, baseless, and
impossible nature of many of the tenets and doctrines of modern embryology—e.g.,
direct development, somatic origin of germ-cells, and epigenesis—it must, of
course, be equally clear that an “embryology of tumours” founded on these can
only be fallacious.
A
tumour, whether simple or complex, is a living thing, and, like everything
living, it comes gradually into being, it unfolds and manifests itself, and in
this way it has its own developmental history. This statement may appear
somewhat metaphorical, but its meaning is clear enough if it be said that very
many tumours, from the most complicated teratomata down to cancer (carcinoma
and sarcoma), are but bizarre manifestations of some portion of an animal
life-cycle. The truth of this could not become apparent hitherto for two
reasons: on the one hand, the views maintained as to the normal cycle of
development were erroneous; and, on the other, the true science of embryology
is as yet almost a terra incognita to pathologists. But, just as there
is a science of normal