Science and Empiricism

Abstract

THIS booklet contains a strange medley of fact and fiction, though apparently written with a good motive, for in his preface the author acknowledges the “splendid efforts of our scientists and medical professors,” and deplores “the neglect of hospitals and laboratories.” In section i. the author discourses on biology and Weismannism; in section ii. on pathology, with special reference to cancer and its cure, in which we are exhorted “in the place of fiction to substitute truth. Instead of holding to the absurd principle that the red corpuscles are the bearers of oxygen, let us in the future build upon the more scientific principle that oxygen is the bearer of the red corpuscles.” Cancer is easily explained. “Super ficial cancer is a disease of the blood tissues and is only dangerous is so far as it affects the tissues or envelope of life. Plasmic cancer, however, is a disease of the oxygen or vital ground, that is to say, of the white corpuscles or physical unity of life, and as such it goes deeper than the tissues.” The seven last pages are devoted to sections on theology, education, and government, but what they are all about we really are not quite sure!