Figure 1

Eosinophil counts lowered by "fasting" and/or "stress". Effect of a 50% reduction in dietary carbohydrates and fats (with proteins, vitamins and minerals as in control group) in C₃H mice with a high breast cancer incidence (not shown), which is greatly lowered by a diet reduced in calories. Is an adrenocortical activation, then assessed by eosinophil depression, an answer for treating breast cancer and for prolonging life? A large and exciting finding – a difference in eosinophil count between two groups of mice – was found, and of course it had to be replicated on a larger group of animals because of its importance to the etiology of cancer. Steroids that depress eosinophil cell counts and perhaps mitoses could be a mechanism through which caloric restriction and ovariectomy act in greatly reducing cancer incidence. This may be the mechanism to prevent breast cancer, or was this very reasonable and plausible hypothesis a premature extrapolation? (My chief had taken these results as a statistically significantly validated, most promising report to Paris.)