CANCER.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 October 1923, Page 1

CANCER.

.MEDICAL EXPERT’S VIEWS. DUNEDIN, October 11. In an address on “The Prevalence of Cancer” at a Health Week meeting, - Dr. L. E. Barnett, the best-known 5 authority in New Zealand on this disease, said cancer of the lower lip was ■ one of the commonest foiins that occurred. It did not very often lc-ad on to death, the reason being that can in this region was so conspicuous rhar the patient usually—unfortunately not always—sought treatment at a sufficiently early stage to give a surgeon or a radiologist a fair chance of curing the trouble. The explanation of the frequency of cancer of the lower lip was to lie iound in the pipe-smoking habit. Men who smoked pipes, especially short pipes, for the greater part of the day, irritated the surface cells of the lower lips to such an extent that any tendency or predisposition to cancer was set in action. It was the rarest thing for anyone except a pipe smoker to suffer from cancer of the lip. It was almost unknown in women except among the fishwives of Scotland and other countries who smoked pipes. Cancer of the tongue, too, was rare among women and common only in pipe smokers, hut other causes of chronic irritation, such as a jagged tooth stump or a syphilitic ulcer, predisposed to cancer in this locality. Internal cancer of the stomach or bowels was dreadfully prevalent in New Zealand, as it was in all civilised countries. and it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that chronic irritation, due to faulty food habits was its causation. Excessive and hasty meat eating, combined with the swallowing of very hot tea, must surely he highly irritating to the lining walls of the alimentary canal, and thereby favour the eocurrenee both of ulceration and cancer formation. Cancer was very rare among tlie native races, including the Maoris, and vegetable feeders were much less susceptible than tin' meat-eating communities. Wails, moles, and skin tags on ihe surface of the body wore very common and usually harmless, but if irritated and inflamed by pressure or friction of the clothes, they might take on an active and uncontrolled growth, and so develop into cancer. This change was especially apt to occur in people past middle life. The only chance of preventing a

widespread extension of cancer was to remove it or destroy it. in its earliest stages. All suspicious lumps or ulcers should ho submitted io a doctor’s inspection without delay, in case they proved cancerous. It could not .lie too often impressed upon the public that cancer in its early stages was not a painful affection. (Medical men sawtragic instances almost daily where patients had lot the. favourable time for treatment pass by, because of the mistaken idea, that seeing there was no pain there could he no cancer. That mistake was responsible for a large proportion of the mortality from'cancer. If patients would only go to a doctor •when a cancerous growth was not larger than a pea, they could nearly always he cured. (Most cases when seen in an early and favourable stage, wcr 0 best treated by operation, but some were more suited for radium and X-ray treatment. In cases of long standing an operation combined with radium and X-ray treatment gave the best results, but in these eases the cures were far less than the failures.