72 THE ENZYME
TREATMENT OF CANCER
belongs.*
if this hypothetical shunting—which, to my mind, in a normal development is
physically impossible without disaster to the developing embryo—happen in the
earliest periods, it will be in connection with cells of the cleavage, and one
or more of these may become the abnormally placed seeds of a tumour or tumours.
As an example, to be commented upon later in its true bearings, Wilms himself
found in one case not less than five embryomata or rudimentary embryos in one ovary!
These represent under Wilms’s views five blastomeres of the cleavage. I do not
know whether or not there be any upholder of epigenetic development who is
prepared to grant the subtraction of this number of cleavage-products without
utter disaster to the further development. As will be seen anon, the
experimental researches of Driesch, Herbst, and others—Bonnet
notwithstanding—do not in the least support Wilms and Bonnet in their
extravagant suppositions. Again, according to Wilms, if the happening be at a
later period, it may concern, for instance, a part of one or more mesoblastic
somites, and, as we know the fate of these, the structure of a tumour arising
subsequently can be foretold. Thus a tumour in the region of the vertebral
column may be made up of “embryonic mesenchyme,” or formative tissue,
cartilage, and bone; or of the first, or of the first and second of these. Such
a tumour Wilms derives from a “shunted” mesoblastic somite, because such a
somite gives rise normally to these tissues. Now that, for example,
* On closer examination, contradictions
in Wilms’s statements may be found. Thus, to account for some turnours, or
parts of such, Wilms requires “germs” from rnesoblastic somites, and these may,
according to him, be displaced physically into—for example—the kidney or
uterus. In this way Wilms’s theory is seen to have very much in common with the
earlier one of Remak-Cohnheim.