THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANCER
THAT world in small, the body of man, lives under a Social Contract of great beauty and efficiency. It embraces millions
of individuals, each with a function and life of his own, but each surrendering something of his liberty, and working for the rest of the community to earn his wages. Every cell both gives and receives, protects and is protected. This tranquil
and perfect organization is termed symbiosis, living together in harmony. A lichen is a simpler example of symbiosis : it is
actually two plants which cannot live apart : each provides the other with certain necessities of existence, and they help each other along without enmity or disagreement. The body of man is a universe of cells, living independence upon each other, and capable, in their sum of extremely varied actions precisely because the division of labour is well organized and the separate tasks are so loyally performed.
But what a catastrophe happens in that universe when a few cells determine to luxuriate upon the work of their fellows ; to live high, to take no exercise, to perform none of the tasks that are demanded of them ! It would be different if they had come from outside : they would have been known for enemies, and the resources of the community would have been massed to attack them. But they are citizens of the body, though they are traitors and vampires ; and the leucocytes, the soldiery of the blood, seem to accept them as friends and good workers. They live indulgently and viciously, drain the blood of its resources and starve out the other cells, multiply and spread with the rapidity of so many degenerates. They have no duties to occupy them ; they can devote their time to preying upon the other cells, and working only for the ruin of the body, and, in the end, their own ruin, too.
Such is the rebellion of cancer ; and if we could find out what conditions make the cancer cells break their allegiance, break the Social Contract of the body, we should know how to prevent cancer, though we should not necessarily know how to cure it. But the problem is difficult. What causes the cells to change themselves from decent working people—or craftsmen, we might almost call them—into libertines and parasites ? It is a com- plete reversal of behaviour. There are certainly plants and animals that live in a similar offensive indolence, fastening upon other plants and animals and sucking out their strength and their life without reciprocating the benefits they receive. There are also unsocial organisms, plants, for example, which exhaust and poison the soil so that nothing can thrive in their company. Such organisms may be accused of indulgence and selfislmess ; they may be called, as Mr. Reinheimer insists on calling them, downright evil. But it is a different case when an organism suddenly becomes parasitic and predatory, having previously been meritoriously and helpfully symbiotic. There must be something to account for the reversal.
The hypothesis of Mr. Reinheimer may be briefly sum- marized. The standards of virtue and vice in the universe depend, he thinks, upon those two antitheses, symbiosis and parasitism. It is definitely immoral and ruinous, through the whole of nature, for an organism to be parasitic. The degree of virtue is the degree in which an organism "gets on" with the universe, living by helping the rest of creation. And if a man himself becomes parasitic, if he indulges himself with food, lives idly and luxuriously, takes more than he gives, then he is encouraging his cells to revolt and become parasitic upon himself. At one and the same time he maltreats them by forbidding them their natural play of individuality, their natural functions, and he pampers them by making the attain- ment of nourishment and satisfaction too easy. By far the commonest cause of early senility and death is over-eating, and the eating of wrong kinds of food. Excessive drinking of intoxicants can do much harm, but it has never been a quarter as baneful as over-eating. A man who indulges himself is engaged in destroying that perfect balance of activities which it took millions of years to reach ; he is making every part of his body revert to the time when each cell was a separate and unco-ordinated appetite. Is it a wonder, then, if some part of his body which has been taught to make claims for an easy and indolent life finds out at last that it can live without trouble if it rebels from its allegiance ? It is possible, even so, that a definite irritation or poisoning is necessary to induce it finally to forget its duty and set up as a brigand upon the body ; but if it had not been already degenerate temptation would have come in vain.
Mr. Reinheimer expands and applies his theory in another way ; and here it would probably be better if he had recorded more concrete observations. It may be true that scientific experiments are at best a check upon theory, a confirmation of the truths of thought. But they are very helpful, they are indispensable, indeed, in showing us where thought has escaped its own notice in going wrong, in preventing the waste of theorizing. We could wish to see much more research in detail to confirm or disprove Mr. Reinheimer's theory of
infeeding." An additional and very grave encouragement to the cells to take up anti-social habits is meat-eating, he thinks. One of the marks of the true parasite is that it feeds upon substances which have already been built up, complicated, and organized into a close similarity with its own bodily fabrics. When man eats flesh, Mr. Reinheimer assures us, he is taking into him food which contains the nutriment his bodyneeds but contains it already in its final form--that chain of processes by which we turn vegetarian substance into flesh, as plants build up organic matter from minerals, is abused or is never called into use at all. The most profitable, healthy, and, in the chain of universal symbiosis, the most moral form of eating is " cross-feeding " : plants that live on plants, animals that live on animals, are monsters and parasites. For a man to live on flesh induces either complete degeneracy or a danger of the malignant degeneracy of parts of his body.
But if we allow most of Mr. Reinheimer's premisses there is still room for him to have argued amiss in this particular. And the question at issue would be the old one—whether man does not make, in himself, a fourth kingdom. Even if we were to admit that all carnivorous animals were lower in dignity and in the scale of morality than vegetarian animals (a question- able tenet, surely) it is possible to believe that the blood and tissue of mankind has differentiated itself so far from animal blood and tissue that the process of digestion is indeed one of creation ; and to affirm that the fact that we can eat, with moral impunity, the flesh of animals is one of the privileges
anJ signs of our manhood. So the book of Genesis instructs us ; and it would seem probable in itself.
Nevertheless, it would be well if the sympathy of all research- workers could be gained for Mr. Reinheimer's book, for much that he writes is obviously true and illuminating. His style is of the lively, ferocious kind so prevalent among vegetarians : he is indignant with the medical profession on the whole, with authorities on cancer in especial ; and he quite naturally complains that his views have not met the attention they deserve. He has been advancing his theories for fourteen years ; in that time he has seen many of them win acceptance, and the credit for their discovery go to others. If we except as dubious his condemnation of all meat-eating, we can approve of all his remarks upon diet : they are sensible and often pro- found. And it is good to observe, in our specialized age, a man who is capable of making a synthesis of details and attempts to elucidate the root causes of disease. We are now working free from the nineteenth century's obsession with symptoms. We have rediscovered the sanity of the old physicians who based their diagnosis and remedies upon ia trc—a0t so much diet as the whole habit of life. With our vast accumulation of empirical knowledge we can look forward hopefully to the time when the major part of medicine will be, not palliation of disease, but the regimen of health in body and spirit. Mr. Reinheimer is one of the forerunners of that age.
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