CHAPTER III 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE PROTEIN PRINCIPLE IN 

 THERAPEUTICS 



Shortly after the first publication of the Proteomorphic Theory 

 (American Medicine, October and November, 1914), I was in 

 Baltimore and had opportunity at Dr. Howard Kelly's private 

 sanitorium to see a number of cancer cases undergoing radium 

 treatment. I was also shown photographs some of which re- 

 vealed really spectacular modifications of malignant growths 

 under influence of radium, and I received first-hand accounts, 

 from physicians not directly connected with the work, of cases 

 in which cancerous growths had magically disappeared appar- 

 ently as a direct result of the application of radium. 



These observations interested me profoundly, and from many 

 points of view. Not long before I had visited Professor Ernest 

 Rutherford in his famous laboratory at Manchester, and had 

 been permitted to study at first hand his radium apparatus, and 

 to observe his fascinating experiments. I had visited Sir J. J. 

 Thompson at the Cavandish Laboratory in Cambridge, at the 

 time when he was making his first photographs of atoms in the 

 vacuum chamber. I had visited Lenard, the precursor of Roent- 

 gen, at Freiburg ; and Ostwald at his home in Grossbothen ; and 

 Arrhenius at the Nobel Institute in Stockholm; and Zeeman in 

 his wonderful laboratory at Amsterdam; and had discussed the 

 alluring problems of the ultimate constitution of matter, 

 the relations of matter and energy, the character of chemical 

 action and electrical action, and kindred subjects suggested by 

 the different yet closely allied discoveries for which these men 

 are famous. 



I had also visited and talked with a group of discoverers 

 in the biological field, and similarly attempted to correlate their 

 observations for example, Metchnikoff, at the Pasteur Insti- 

 tute in Paris, who was then studying conditions in the alimen- 

 tary tract in their relation to health and longevity; Ehrlich, at 

 his Frankfort Institution, who had just given the world salvarsan, 

 and thereby revived hope in specific chemo-therapy ; Sir Aim- 

 wroth Wright, at St. Mary's Hospital in London, who was 

 actively elaborating the theory and practice of autogenous vac- 

 cine therapy, and venturing into another new field in the attempt 

 to combat hay fever with pollin extracts ; and Professor George 

 F. H. Nuttall, Quick Professor Biology at Cambridge Univer- 

 sity, whose fascinating work with the precipitins, through which 



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