TREATMENT OF CANCER

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21416, 7 March 1935, Page 9

TREATMENT OF CANCER

TO TUB EDITOR OI THE PX1863. Sir, —Dr. J. S. Elliot's address to the Hospitals' Conference on cancer gives one much food lor thought. He spoke of nothing but treatment by radium, etc., and I should think that all the medical men who really think on the .subject wiu quite disagree with his suggestions. Have we any evidence to show that cancer is really on the decrease since ihe introduction of the present treatment by forces of which little is known?" No, it is decidedly 011 the increase. Let us contrast Dr. Elliot's suggestion for high voltage plants with Sir Humphrey Rollcston's latest warning on opening an exhibition of Hie British Institute of Radiology 'at Westminster. Sir Humphrey said that while it was undoubtedly scientific to remove, destroy, or neutralise the cause of disease, this process, if carried too far without regard to the patient, might be disastrous. Sir Humphrey went on to tell why the radiological treatment of cancer is fraught with danger, and concluded by saying that the time had come to ask whether the medical radiologists were fully justified in demanding X-ray apparatus of higher and higher voltages. If thrt were a necessary part of the treatment of cancer, there could be little doubt that the country would provide it. Sir Humphrey's whole address showed very plainly how little faith he had in such means of treatment for cancer. Another statement of Dr. Elliot's can be challenged. He said: "There is more need for cancer wards or for a cancer horpitul than for tuberculosis wards or for a consumptive hospital, because cancer is a far greater scourge." Now I maintain that if Dr. Elliot and the radiologists would start and investigate on the proper lines they would find that tuberculosis and cancer are so closely related that the two diseases cannot be separated. Dr. Thomas Cherry, the Cancer Research Fellow of the Melbourne University, has given rears of patient work to the relation between the two diseases, and wrote: "The question of the causation of cancer, as investigated by the Cancer Research Committee, has fallen into two sections. The first deals with the grounds for the hypothesis that tuberculosis and cancer are related. The second section deals with the results of experimental work in the production of cancer through the medium of the tubercule bacillus." He goes on to tell how statistics, etc., prove very conclusively that there is a close relation between the two diseases. There is 110 doubt but that if the cause of cancer is to be discovered a more intimate knowledge of the body and its functions must be known, and the all important subject of the effect on the bodv of the different foodstuffs. ]f the medical profession worked m unison on one aspect alpnc of the disease, i.e.. why there is no pain in the early stages of cancer. I am sure that a great stride towards the solution of the cause would be made. In conclusion, I can only hope that no hospital board will be so unwise as to spent the huge sums of money suggested by Dr. Elliot for plants which there is no evidence to show are relieving the death rate of cancer.— Yours, etc., M.D. Clifton, March 6, 1935.