246 THE PROTEAL TREATMENT OF CANCER 



tissues, whipping them up to increased production of the tumor 

 cell-destroying substances. As cancers consist essentially of al- 

 buminoid substances, it seems evident that their retrogression and 

 absorption depend on the intensification of certain disintegration 

 processes." 



Here, it will be observed, the ideas which furnish the essential 

 thesis of the present monograph to the effect that protein an- 

 tigens stimulate the blood-producing tissues, and that these in 

 turn produce the substances that destroy the tumor cell are 

 stated as if they were matters of common or accepted knowledge. 

 If Klinger reached these conclusions independently, and without 

 having seen my papers of October and November, 1914, and 

 Ocober 2, 1915, his estimate will obviously have peculiar value 

 by way of corroboration. 



I mention this, not because questions of priority have con- 

 siderable significance or even interest, but because the main thesis 

 involved has vast importance, and because the judicious reader 

 cannot fail to be impressed by the fact that certain Swiss physi- 

 cians working with animal proteins should have obtained results 

 so strikingly in accordance with results obtained by American 

 physicians working with vegetable proteins. It does not appear 

 that Klinger recognizes the response of the blood-forming organs 

 as essentially a protein reaction, but that detracts nothing from 

 the corroborative value of his observations. 



My own work has been carried forward, as the reader is well 

 aware, under guidance of an hypothesis the hypothesis, namely, 

 that results were attained through the administration of proteins 

 or protein by-products, as such; that the patient immunized 

 against one protein may be given a stimulus by the use of another 

 protein, and ultimately by yet another; and that there is nothing 

 mysterious connected with the matter, except in so far as all 

 biological processes are mysterious. 



It is vastly important that this thesis should be sustained or 

 repudiated at the earliest possible moment. All my recent ex- 

 periences tend to confirm the thesis ; to establish it more firmly in 

 my mind. In bringing forward the reports of other workers, 

 therefore, as I am doing in the present section, the only thought 

 is to present to the reader as wide an array of evidence as possible, 

 not because there is the remotest element of doubt in my own 

 mind as to the validity of the argument, but because I am aware 

 that the discovery in itself seems so simple as to be almost un- 

 believable; and because, therefore, I wish to fortify this in the 

 mind of the reader as completely as data at present available 

 permit. 



It is a familiar experience in medicine that innovators appear 

 to get results with a remedy that others cannot duplicate. There- 



