76 THE ENZYME TREATMENT OF CANCER
hand,
some of the aberrant and vagrant germ-cells described by the writer undoubtedly
possess, as was once remarked to the writer by a human anatomist, far greater
potentialities for mischief than any germs ever conceived of by pathologists.
Not
only the embryonic rests and the germinal shuntings, but a host of subsidiary
hypotheses—among others, those of Borst, relating to the tumours of the sacral
and cerebral regions—become superfluous in the light of the much simpler theory
of tumour-formation as due to— (1) the abnormal development of a
persistent primary germ-cell, and (2) the bizarre pathological manifestation by
this of some greater or less portion of a life-cycle. Under this view most, if
not all, tumours receive a simple explanation, and under it, also, it must be
manifest that previous attempts—that of Wilms excepted—to explain the tumours,
in taking the simpler ones as the starting-points, have really begun at the
wrong end of the scale. Neither in theory nor in practice can the degree in
greatest possible reduction of an embryoma or rudimentary embryo be defined,
and, in fact, in actual practice and theory a simple tumour will represent a
low degree of such reduction.
Certainly,
regarded as pathological manifestations of some greater or less portion of a
life-cycle, all the peculiarities of very many tumours are fully explained. A
germ-cell, developing abnormally, may, after its developmental unfolding has
begun, undergo degenerative changes of various kinds and degrees as to greater
and smaller portions of its parts, or some foundations may remain latent,
wholly or in part; and in this way a single cell, or a larger or smaller group
of such, endowed with certain well-defined potentialities, may be left as the actual
seed, as the origin, of the tumour thereby arising.