290 CHEMOTHERAPY 



hydrochlorisoquinine had no effect upon the course of artificial 

 pneumococcus infections, ethyl-hydrocuprein was capable of arresting 

 the infection in 50 per cent, of their animals, when given six hours 

 after the inoculation, i. e., at a time when from ten to a thousand 

 multiples of the fatal dose of organisms were already in circulation. 

 Although corresponding experiments in the human being have not 

 as yet yielded encouraging results, the data obtained in the animal 

 experiment are highly significant, as they have clearly demonstrated 

 that the substance in question has a selective affinity for the organ- 

 isms concerned. For this reason it would seem quite within the 

 domain of possibility that a substance may be produced which may 

 be more effective and freer from undesirable side effects, or, to use 

 the parlance of Ehrlich, one in which the bacteriotropism would be 

 greatly predominating over its organotropism. 



CHEMOTHERAPY IN MALIGNANT DISEASE. 



While the pathogenesis of malignant disease is still sub judice, 

 and while no satisfactory evidence has as yet been furnished to sup- 

 port the belief that it is parasitic in origin, it would seem as though 

 the principles which are involved in its non-surgical treatment, 

 are after all the same as those with which we have become familiar 

 in the course of our study of the infectious diseases proper. Here 

 as there cells are multiplying within the body, which in malignant 

 disease are in a manner just as foreign to the adjacent normal cell 

 as a bacterium or a protozoan parasite would be, and here as there 

 the life of the foreign cell in its abnormal environment leads to 

 disturbances of the normal functions not only of the adjacent tissues, 

 but of the body at large, which may be so serious in character that 

 the death of the macroorganism may follow, and in malignant 

 disease indeed invariably follows. Here as there then the main 

 plan of our treatment must be to so influence the proliferating 

 foreign cell as to lead to its direct destruction, or at least to prevent 

 its development, without causing undue harm to the normal cells 

 of the body. Evidently this is in part at least a problem of modern 

 pharmacology and one which is intimately connected with the study 

 of immunity, for we must remember that cell destruction within 

 the body, of whatever kind, will invariably lead to a response on 

 the part of the macroorganism which is in the end of a protective 



