CANCER SCOURGE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10315, 26 January 1927, Page 5

CANCER SCOURGE

DEFINITELY CURABLE IN EARLY STAGES.

DOCTORS INCLINED TO WAIT TuO LON Or.

SIR B. MOYNIiIAN’S OPINION

(.United Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received Jan. 2-5, 10.50 p.rn.) LONDON, Jan, 24.

Sir Berkeley Moynihan, addressing the British Medical Association, and emphasising the growing mortality from cancer and the fact that it is definitely curable if treated in the early stages, said that in the last twenty years, the general death rate had fallen 32 per cent-., infant death rate 45 per cent., and tuberculosis 35 per cent, but the cancer death rate had increased 20 per cent. Doctors were inclined to watch the earlier stages until certain of the presence of cancer. This made for certainty of diagnosis, but often it also meant the certainty of death. There did not appear to be any predisposition to cancer now that was caused by any special food or want of it. While the disease was local, and when the growth was accessible, it was definitely curable.

Sir B. Moynihan said he was confident that research would eventually capture the secret of the cause of cancer. That conquest was a question of money. It had been revealed that no actual cure of cancer had been effected .bv X-rravs. —A. and N.Z.C.A.

CANCER AND TUBERCULOSIS MELBOURNE DUCTOR’S INVESTIGATIONS. Dr. R. J. Bull, director of the bacteriological laboratory at the University of Melbourne, returned by the Aorangi from an eight months’ tour, during which he visited the medical centres in Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, ami America. He represented the Victorian Government at the congress or the Royal Sanitary Institute, the Health department at the Social Hygiene conference, and the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association at the annual meeting at Nottingham. Dr. Bull was particularly interested in tuberculosis and cancer work. He found an enormous amount of research work in progress, but no one could yet sav what was the definite causative factor in cancer, or why one case, should yield to a certain treatment and another exactly similar case resist it. in England, colloidal lead treatment was giving 50 cures out of 2-50 and 50 arrested cases. At the Tuberculosis -Congress in America it was concluded that the best method of fighting tuberculosis was bv prophylactic propaganda, particularly with" child life. Referring to recent work on filterable viruses, DrBull, said that research workers were by no means clear on the subject, and were not now certain whether what had been concluded to be living viruses were live organisms. He witnessed, and performed himself, remarkable work "with micro-dissectors, which enabled scientists to dissect a single cell or a blood corpuscle.