CANCER

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27410, 24 July 1954, Page 3

CANCER

Sir, —The report in “The Press” today £ that Russian scientists believe that ner- ( vous systems play a big role in the - disease of cancer reminds me of a j ' report in your paper, dated September. 1937, or thereabouts. A nurse at South ( ’ Brighton held similar beliefs and 1 j claimed cures by treating the nervous : system. Her beliefs were not upheld , ■ by our local medicine men of that time. ■ [ It certainly seems rational that irrita- > tion and inflammation of ‘the inter- > nal nerves can cause cancer, even as . skin cancer is caused by irritation of r the surface nerves. Breeding better . nerves to face modern stresses might r defeat cancer.— Yours, etc., 1 PRE-STRESSED. . July 23, 1954. j Sir, —If in Russia cancer is regarded P “as something unde? the control of > the nervous system, going on in the j entire body,” and if there “they do not 2 find any link between cigarettes and 2 lung cancer,” while English and - American workers in cancer research

disclose different findings, is it possible both are partly correct? As a non-smoker who has observed the effects of the habit upon others I have received the impression that many persons who suffer nervous tension appear to revert to a cigarette when so assailed and to become progressively restless if enduring either voluntary or enforced abstention. Is the cigarette habit the result of the same type of nervous condition of mind and body as that which in Soviet Russia is considered to control cancer? Could both or either lead to varied forms of cancer?—Yours, etc., < POOLED RESULTS. July 23, 1951.