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 97 frequency of metastases. Intravenous injections of different experimental tumours result in different frequency of tissue metastases (tissue affinity, Table B, row 4, second column, Kellner 1971 204-206). Cancerous (or embryonic) tissue contains more water and surface-active compounds (lipids, less Ca, etc.) as Bauer (1923a) and Solowiew (1924, 1925) stated, but contains also products of destroyed cells through damaged vessels entering constantly into the circulation from the tumour and its neighbourhood’s (Kohtobckhh, bepc>KäHCKMH n MaeBCKHH 1927 cit. Pyöumumeün 1932 199-200). These were to be used in the innumerable diagnostic cancer tests developed in the nineteen thirties and forties which turned out to be insufficiently sensitive and specific (see Schmidt, H. 1955 966-980). Today biological mass spectrometry can show tumour degradation products in the serum (Petricoin et al 2002; see Elek - Lapis 2006). It is Bauer’s merit that he never tried to use surface tension to diagnose malignancies but only to evaluate the seriousness of the disease. Also the starting point of Bauer’s theory - decreased surface tension - was not the cause but the effect of cancer. But the main blow to Bauer’s cancer theory was that in vivo enhancement of cell division by surface-active agents notwithstanding, no tumours could be induced with Tributyrin, lactic acid and calcium-free diet (Hoffmann 1933). Four years after Bauer published his work (1923a), we already reed: ‘The ideas of permeability changes of cell membranes and of surface tension of tissue fluids gained tremendous significance for (all) physiology. No doubt they are also important for the problem of cancer but it is doubtful that they are sufficient to fully explain the origin of cancer, as Bauer assumes... His interesting results will need extensive verification before we see clearly. As yet there is no reason to explain cancer formation on the basis of humoral pathol- ogy’ (Fischer-Wasels 1927 1435-1436). Bauer’s statement: ‘based on my experiments, facts and considerations, I regard the problem of cancer solved. The surface tension of the serum provides us a measurable parameter, from the value of which the origin and growth potential of cancer depends ’ - became obsolete and shown to be erroneous. We must remember, however, that when he wrote this sentence, he himself added and stressed: ’this represents the most general condition of the origin of cancer, as we know it today’ (Bauer 1923a). The physiological colloid theory became obsolete in the nineteen thirties and it hampered the development of protein chemistry and enzymology (see Elek 2014). ‘Colloid chemistry discloses what is similar between “dead” colloid and protoplasm... but gives no insight in what they differ, thus into the essential properties of living systems' (Bertalanjfy 1932 243). Gradually genetics and biochemistry gained predominance over colloid chemistry. The syndrome of inherited familiar polyposis, unfailingly ending in cancer, became known (see Fischer-Wasels 1927 1648). Events moved fast; in the thirties the leading theory of cancer was Otto Warburg’s metabolic theory based on cellular phenomena: tumour cells have enhanced glycolysis (see Burk et al. 1967). The surface tension of certain cell membranes could be measured in late nineteen thirties. Its value turned out to be too low for membranes made only of lipid and was attributed to the presence of proteins. We speak now of lipoprotein membranes (Danielli 1958 246). These new facts could no longer be accommodated by Bauer’s theory. Bauer took no part in the debates about surface tension in cancerous tissue. Bauer moved to the USSR in 1925 and held positions successively at the Obukh Institute of Occupational Diseases in Moscow (1925-1931), the K.A. Timiryazev Biological Institute in Moscow (1932-1937) and the All Union Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad
