Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 230-233. (Budapest, 2015)
KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Elek Gábor—Müller Miklós: Bauer Ervin és a rákkutatás
94 Comm, de Hist. Artis Med. 230-233 (2015) Bauer’s ideas Comment 5 Therapy B auer developed a procedure to obtain a spleen extract, which increased the surface tension of the serum. The procedure was acquired by Ernst Stilten’s pharmaceutical factory, which put the Droduct as Sunertendin Silbe on the market fsee Gehes Codex, 1926). It had been recommended for cancer patients, but the dosage was not specified. The effects of the preparation were not tested on cancer bearing experimental animals (Bauer 1925). Industrial production of Bauer’s extract preceded that of Fichera’s preparation, introduced in Germany only after 1933 (see Fichera 1933). Although Bauer newer called the treatment by his extract a non-specific therapy it should be regarded as such. The effect of the non-specific therapy on the surface tension of the serum was proved (see Gutfeld 1925). Similar specimens were used until the 1950s (see Hammerschmid 1953). After this time chemotherapy had the leading role in cancer treatment. Bauer detected a decreased surface tension in sera from cancer patients. These sera were not heat inactivated (in today’s parlance, denatured; Bauer 1923a and 1923b)-, but he assumed that molecules in cancerous serum suffered the same change as after heat inactivation (Table B, row 3). This observation became the first crucial point in his theory. He was not considering possible differences (see Heréik 1934 140-141). We need to remember that molecular alterations caused by denaturation were clarified only in the nineteen forties when Bauer was no longer alive (see Elek 2014). He claimed that the tissue fluid, i.e. the microenvironment of cells (intercellular space) - a thin liquid film according to Bauer - originates from serum (Table B, first row). Surface tension between cells decreases, too, thus cohesiveness of the tissue structure can almost vanish in some places. In such places some cells may become totally unrelated to their neighbours, independent from the whole organism, thus their differentiation is blocked. This process is isolation, the second crucial point in Bauer’s theory. Bauer shows the microscopic manifestation of isolation on tar painted skin (Bauer 1923a Fig. 1) where the concomitant inflammation induced oedema around atypical cells. But we know that scattered pattern is frequent in already spreading carcinoma as well: disjunction, reticular growth or micro-metastases around primary cancer (Kellner 1971 22, 184-185, Fig. 35 on page 65). Bauer regards isolation as the necessary and sufficient cause of the origin and development of cancer. Hence isolation replaces malignant mutation in his theory (Table B, row 2). Genetics of mammalian cells, however, was not much studied in the nineteen twenties, so Bauer could correctly state: ‘ unequal distribution of chromosomes was not confirmed, it does not explain all observations in a direct way ... and cannot be tested experimentally, thus it is not predictive' (Bauer 1923a). Only a decade later could another author write: ‘71 is a disturbing sign of the fragmentation of our science that the conclusions of the two of the most modern and much studied research areas - genetics and colloid chemistry — so clearly oppose each other (Bertalanffy 1932 222). Only in the thirties became probable that aft cells (even bacterial ones) contain nuclei even if they might not visible under the microscope and that nuclei probably contain nucleic acids (see Bertalanffy 1932 209-214). When Bauer could not secure a stable position in Prague2, he decided to move to Berlin in 1923 (Müller 2005). With Bauer’s motivation to fight cancer it was natural that he approached 2 The senate of the medical faculty declines Bauer’s application for Venia legendi, June 27, 1922. Archive of the Charles University, Prague, Personalakta 88.
