Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 230-233. (Budapest, 2015)
KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Elek Gábor—Müller Miklós: Bauer Ervin és a rákkutatás
ELEK, Gábor- MÜLLER, Miklós: Ervin Bauer and Cancer Research 101 He deserved better. As discussed above, physiological colloid chemistry postulated in the 1920s that cell division is accompanied by energy liberation, thus it is a passive process. In contrast, Bauer regarded division an energy requiring active cell process, as confirmed later. He regarded the decrease of surface tension of tissue fluids as explanation for the cancer origin. This explanation proved to be incorrect within a decade. He developed a treatment, which, however, was essentially identical to the then widely used non-specific stimulation therapy. Thus the power and also the limit of theoretical biology were clearly shown at the first. ‘E.S. Bauer s general theory of life, in spite of it great significance for theoretical biology, was never understood by his contemporaries and was not developed further by other scientists. Several of his ideas were developed on other basis. E.S. Bauer still should be regarded as a predecessor of many other scientists... ’ (3omuna 1990 949). Is this conclusion correct? It seems, yes. Even von Bertalanffy, who is much acclaimed as the founder of modem theoretical biology, could not disregard Bauer’s principle of non-equilibrium (Table A, row 2). In formulating his dynamical or pseudo-equilibrium condition of living Bertalanffy also ended up with the physically non-equilibrium state of living systems (see Elek — Müller 2013). Acknowledgements We thank Dr F. Leimkugel (Berlin) and Dr. K. Bosse-Bringewatt (Marburg) for kind replies to our queries. We also acknowledge the unfailing help of Dr. Sergei Zhebrovski, Dr. Yuri Golikov (Sankt-Petersburg), Dr. Jan Jankii (Prague), Mrs Erzsébet Tenges, Mrs Ildikó Pálos and Mrs Nóra Bieder-Elek (Budapest) with documentation and in obtaining literature. GÁBOR ELEK, MD, DSc H-l 124 Budapest, Deres u 10/a elek. nora@freemai I. hu MIKLÓS MÜLLER, MD, DR H.C. The Rockrfeller University, New York, NY 10065, USA mmuller@rockefeller.edu
