CAUSES OF CANCER.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4740, 20 August 1924, Page 1

CAUSES OF CANCER.

HOW WE AKE POISONED. STEPS FOR PREVENTION. In in introduction to an epoch-mak-ing book by J. Ellis Barker on Cancer, Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane bestows on it the highest praise. Mr Barker’s work, he says, “is most excellent and valuable, and I am certain that it will prove a great boom, to mankind. . . . He shows in the most convincing manner how cancer is brought about and how it can be staved off.” . The book is addressed not to those who have cancer, but rather to those who wish to avoid having it. Mr Barker tells the public : “Some years ago I was, I think, in an advanced pre-cancerous condition. To improve iny health I took energetic measures, which proved very beneficial. Whether I succeeded in staving off cancer only the future can show. . . . Both parents of my father died of cancer. Both of my mother’s parents died of arterio-sclerosis, another disease of civilisation not unrelated to cancer.” He describes how he suffered from bad digestion and. became steadily worse. Therewas nothing sensational in the remedies which he applied. He sums them up thus : “I began to take regular exercise. I slept with the window wide open and began to introduce gradually natural soft foods and slightly course foods followed by coarser foods. J exchanged the enervating and con-, stipatmg hot bath for the tepid bath, for the cool bath, and at last for the cold bath. I began to try eating peeled raw fruit, and then fruit with the peel; Then I went on to coarse wholemeal bread, and found that the skin of the baked potato is the best part of the tuber.” His health was transformed. CHRONIC POISONING. Mr Barker gives his own conclusion regarding the causes of cancer : “In my opinion cancer is due to chronic poisoning and to vitamine starvation. I have some hesitation in saying whether it is due to chronic poisoning aggravated by vitamine starvation or to vitamine starvation aggravated by . chronic poisoning. However, it seems to me that chronic poisoning is perhasp the more striking factor of the two because it affects men and women directly, while vitamine starvation acts indirectly.” While cancer is often produced by chronic poisoning from without, the testimony .is overwhelming that it is also brought about from within. “By chronic poisoning from the bowel , by auto-intoxication consequent upon chronic constipation, especially in cases where the bowel tissues nave been weakened by an injudiciously chosen diet and by acutely irritant purgatives which, unfortunately, are universally employed. This is a comparatively recent conclusion of the great medical authorities : constipation is one of the chief ''causes of cancer. “As for vitamines, those mysterious substances whichhave only recently been discovered are now known to have an enormous influence on health. Lack of them in food, or vitamine starvation, lessens the power of the body to resist disease. The suspected and the, as yet, unsuspected vitamines , are found in food in its natural condition, and they are almost universally destroyed by the processes which food undergoes with a view to 'improving it. Hence it is important to eat fresh fruit, as prolonged heat destroys most vitamines ; to avoid soda in cooking, because it kills the vitamines; always to prefer fresh to prepared or tinned meat; and never to use white bread. Green vegetables and uncooked' * sal ads" are of special value. PRESERVATIVES. “But while vitamines are apt to be insufficient in modern cooking and food, an even worse danger is the wholesale use of poisonous chemical preservatives. Such substances ats boric acid,- salicylic acid, sulphur dioxide; benzoic acid, and copper sulphate in some cases are added; to food with indiscriminate recklessness. Those who would avoid cancer have to go back from 1 ' the artificially manipulated l foods to the natural foods, and never tolerate constipation.”