90 THE ENZYME
TREATMENT OF CANCER
Professor
C. Giacomini seriously to heart, instead of ignoring them “Of all the
structures of the egg, the chorion is that which arises before every other,
quickly makes itself independent of the others, and, by the quick development
of its cells, is placed in a position to live and to develop even when all
other parts of the egg, through some cause or other, have ceased to exist.”
In
recent years the writer has urged again and again that in researches upon
animal development, two things must be kept sharply separate: the embryo or
sexual form and the asexual foundation—in human development the chorion or
trophoblast—upon which it arises. According to orthodox embryology this
chorion or trophoblast is a part of the embryo, although it is invariably
present before any part of an embryo; although it may persist after the
complete disappearance of the embryo ; although it is never formed from or by
an embryo; and although ultimately it never makes any part of the embryonic body!
Logically, how can it be maintained that a structure which arises before an
embryo, and out of no part of it, and which never goes to form any part of any
organ of the body, is embryonic or foetal in nature ? What is there to prevent,
as Pick suggests, the total disappearance of all parts of an ovarian or
testicular embryoma except the (pathological) chorion or trophoblast? The
persistence and further growth of this would but, and does, result in cancer
(carcinoma), lie who doubts this had better read the facts as they were
described in 1905 by Dr. L. Pick, and as they are given in abstract in
the Appendix. As the chorion is always present before an embryo, nothing in the
abnormal development of a vagrant or aberrant germ-cell would appear to forbid
the arrest of this prior to the appearance of any trace of an “embryoma,” with
the natural sequel—a carcinoma.