CANCER.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 261, 28 July 1908, Page 7

CANCER.

1)R. DOYEN-ON GiiKM ACTION. (BI TELEGRAM—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COriRIGIIT.) ' : (Uec. July '27, 11.40 p.m.) * London, July 27. Dr. Doyen claims to liavo discovered the action of tho germ that produces . cancer. THE DOYEN SERUM. Doyen some four yoars ago announced that ho had discovered a serum which, injected, was a oure, or a relief for cancer. Mr. Edmund Owon, vice-president of tho Koyal College of Surgeons, made in 190G the following statement concerning the Doyen serum:— Two years or so ago ' all Paris' and a great many other people were set talking about a method of treatment which had sprung from tho brain of Dr. Boyon,' a surgeon of acknowledged manual dexterity and- enterprise. In nearly all the. cases which he claimed as evi. dence of tho value of his injection treatment the patients had in addition been submitted to operation by the knife. In other cases there was no proof that the local trouble was cancerous. Dr. Alexander Paine and Dr. David llor' gan had applied the method to • a series of cases regarded as suitable by Dr. Doyen himself, who had seen thorn. In some of them the injection was followed by severe pain; in some it caused alarming symptoms. All of them went steadily downhill; 'in none was there any improvement,' and 'it was decided to suspend the treatment. J " Subsequently, the Paris correspondent of a London paper took up tho cudgels for Dr. Doytm, and stated:— , ' The Sooiete de Chirurgie appointed a Oommittee to examine fifty cases treated by Dr. Doyen.. They selected twenty-four of these, and proposed two others, making twenty-six in all. The two cases added by the committee were accepted by.D.r. Doyen under protest, as they wore in the. last stages of the disease, and, in fact, died a few days afterwards. In July last year the committee handed in a roport,,stating that twenty, out of the twenty-six cases had grown manifestly worse; three were eliminated, two others stationary, and one only had given no signs of relapse. Dr. Doyen protested against this report, and continued treating his patients. The latter were then examined anew, after eighteen months by a -committee composed of three members of the Academy of Mcdicine and about a dozen doctors of tho Paris hospitals. Their report, according to one of them, Dr. Raoul Blondl, is in direct contradiction. to v the one made by the committee of surgeons last year. - Of the twenty-patients who had been declared manifestly worse eighteen months ago, sixteen are still living, eleven are in perfect health, two are still in a doubtful condition; and the other three seeiu to be improving. Two years ago every one of these patients iras in a very serious state, and several wero considered dying. This'result has aroused new interest in Dr. Doyen's serum." Medical men say there is no known euro for cancer. . ' .