110 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



application of agencies that were not necessarily destructive of 

 the normal tissues subjacent to the abnormal growth. 



This possibility being demonstrated, it seemed to me that the 

 first great step toward the ultimate successful issue of the con- 

 test with cancer had been taken. 



It appeared to me, however, that radium therapy, as applied 

 to cancer and the allied X-ray treatment which I had also 

 investigated was subject to one almost insuperable difficulty. 

 It was hard to conceive how a method could be devised through 

 which the application of the disruptive rays could be brought 

 to bear on the cancer cells without bringing an influence on the 

 cells of healthy subjacent tissues ; and there was ample clinical 

 evidence that if this influence was carried beyond a certain 

 stage injury resulted to the healthy cells no less than to the 

 abnormal ones. The fair inference seems to be that the cancer 

 cells are of somewhat less stable constitution; that they, there- 

 fore, yield more readily to the disruptive influence of the radia- 

 tion; but that the difference between these cells and the normal 

 cells in this regard is a difference of degree and not a differ- 

 ence of kind. Such being the case, there is an obvious obstacle 

 in the use of radium or the X-ray, which by no means bars 

 these agents from usefulness, but which suggests, as it seems 

 to me, that they do not give promise of ultimate ideal solution 

 of the problem. 



The ideal would be a chemical agent, biological or other, that 

 had selective chemical affinity for the cancer cell, with capacity 

 to effect disruptive activities, somewhat as salvarsan seemingly 

 has selective affinity for the spirochaete of syphilis. 



In particular, at this time, my mind dwelt on the experiment 

 of Vaughan, with a brief statement of which the original presen- 

 tation of the Proteomorphic Theory had been concluded, which 

 showed that the large mononuclear leucocyte produces or con- 

 tains enzymes capable of splitting up cancer cells. In the con- 

 cluding paragraph of the Proteomorphic Theory, as originally 

 published, I suggested the possibility of producing antibodies 

 from the bodies of leucocytes ; and I had in mind, naturally, 

 the possible application of such enzymes in the treatment of 

 cancer (it was well known that Vaughan was working prac- 

 tically along these lines), and also the more general application 

 of the method implied in a predicted "extension of serum therapy 

 and vaccine therapy and the development of a new cyto-therapy." 



That the suggested new therapy involved the use of meas- 

 ures to increase the numbers of corpuscles, and stimulate their 

 enzymic activities, was everywhere implied, and moreover was 

 explicitly stated in the discussion of agents calculated to produce 

 this effect; but the simple method of evoking a corpuscular re- 

 sponse by parenterally introducing foreign proteins as such did 



