CANCER RESEARCH.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 876, 23 July 1910, Page 5

CANCER RESEARCH.

HEREDITY A NEGLIGIBLE QUANTITY. Ht TeleeraDli-Press ABSocintion-Copyrleht London, July 21. Mr. Balfour, presiding at a. meeting of the committee of the Imperial Cancer Research i'und, said the deductions drawn from its labours showed that heredity, as a cause of the disease, was a negligible quantity, and that implanted cancer could be checked.

WHAT IS KNOWN OF CANCER.

AN EXHAUSTIVE KEPOHT. In u lengthy report last year the British Imperial Cancer Research Fund summed up its first six years' work. The report is chiefly composed of negative enlightenment. No "cencer germ" bus been discovered. It is not thought that there is one. No "entiloxm" has been prepared, because there does not appear to be any toxin. Uiincer is not communicable, ana there dues not seem to be any way of conferring immunity to it. It can be transferred from one iinitnal to another of the same species, but only by the transplanting ol tlie living cells. This relieves us <jl the fear of catching the disease from in -the family or from infected clothing, food or building, lien handling cancerous rats by the thousand day after day for years are not affected. Many of the popular beliefs prove on examination to be devoid of evidence. Cancer is not. a product of civilisation; ■it is not confined to human beings; it is not a penalty for eating flesh, or fish, or tomatoes, or cheese; it is not inherited; it is not certain that it is increasing. On tho contrary, it afflicts vertebrates all the way down the scale of life to marine fishes. Jfen, savage and civilised, and aniniois, wild am! tamo, are not f-ee from it. It prevails among the .vegetarians of Japan and India as well as among the omnivorous Europeans and Americans. According to the medical statistics of England and Wales in ISB9 !he chance of a man above thirty-five years ultimately dying of-cancer was one in twenty-one, ond for a woman of the same age one in twelve. Now, according to tho reports, l-he coriespoiiding chances are one in eleven for men and one in seven for women. Whether this represents a real increase or merely greater ability to detect the disease and greater care in tsporting it. it is not yet settled. On the cause and cure of cancer the report of the Imperial Research Fund contains little to satisfy public curiosity. The tdosl that sun be said positively" is that cancer originates, apparently spontaneously, at points of chronic irritation of any kind, and that under certain conditions the system may react against it and effect a cure. The only treatment recommended is early surgical removal of the tumour. From experiments recently reported by other investigatorsi jt seems likely that ihe radium emanation may be used successfully in some cases.