Cancer.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 195, 19 February 1897, Page 2

Cancer.

Dr Snow, of the Cancer Hospital in London, does not, apparently, believe in such a thing as a cancer microbe. He considers that cancer is mainly due to mental worry, the mind inflicting its own tortures upon some weak organ of the body. "Dr Snow," says the Eawke's Bay Herald, in an article on the subject, " is supported by a number oil authorities who believe cancer to be a disease of nervous orign, and who find that nervous diseases are lareely on the increase owing to the increasing mental strain imposed upon humanity by the demands ot modern civilisation. Many medical men attribute cancer to prolonged indigestion. This explanation, however, does not necessarily exclude the others, because overtasked nerves are responsible for indigestion also. . , . Dr Snow attributes canoer to the direct action of nervous worry, but the indigestion to which the second class attribute it is very likely to be caused by nervous worry aiso." Dr Bird, the retiring president of the Medical Society of Victoria, quite agrees that anxiety a.nd depression of spirits predispose the sufferer to cancer. In his retiring address recently delivered, he dealt at length on this almost uniformly fatal form of disease. There was nothing very hopeful in his- conclusions. He admitted that cancer was apparently on the increase, that no advance had been made towards ascertaining its cause, and that be knew of no method of cure save the excision of the diseased part.