CANCER OUTLOOK.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5169, 24 August 1927, Page 1

CANCER OUTLOOK.

influence of heredity.

SYDNEY SURGEON’S VIEWS.

One of the most interesting conclusions reached by Dr. D. Kelly, senioi hon. surgeon of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Sydney, is that in many eases cancer is definitely hereditaij. Dr. Kelly, who has been prominent in the treatment of cancer by surgery, recently made another visit to America and what he learned there, added to his own wide experience, is mademanifest in the current issue of the Australian Medical Journal. A work which Dr. Kelly believes will go further than anything at present before the profession in solving the human cancer problem is that of Dr. Maud Sly, of Chicago. Her experiments on thousands of mice over 20 years show that, heredity is the most important factor in the appearance of cancer in mice. Theie is no reason to doubt, Dr. Kelly stays, that fa the same conditions were opplied to men the results would be the same.

He suggests that in all hospitals records should 'be kept, and by this means a very valuable guide to heredity in humans would be obtained. “Every experienced surgeon,” he says, “has seen three or more cancers occurring in one family, and there no doubt in my mind that if we were able to trace these families back we should then find that cancer existed on both sides.” CANCER POSITION TO-DAY. Summing up the position as it appears to-day, he says—1. In some people there is a cancer strain or susceptibility inherited from ancestors perhaps three or four 01 more generations back. 2. In .these people some injury causes, a destruction of| cells, and if the irritation causing the destruction is continued regenerative processes become abnormal, cell differentiation lessens or ceases entirely, and the undifferentiated cells', left to theii own devices, become a. malignant neoplasm. 3. It is possible that the alterations in the mechanism of differentiation are due in some cases to tihe introduction of micro-organisms into cells whose resistance to infection has been decreased by continued irritation. Under the heading of prevention Dr. Kelly states that until some test is devised to prove that any given person is of the dominant cancel-ie-sistant type, It will be necessary to avoid all irritations, and if they do exist to get rid of them at the earliest opportunity. ■On the “Subject of treatment he says

that, as medical knowledge is, at P re " sent, the only known methods of successfully treating malignant diseases are surgery, application of low-grade

heat, radiation, and perhaps; in a very limit.ed number of inoperable, cancers, colloidal lead. Wherever surgery is possible 'it should be practised, and this view was generally adotped all over the world.

There were a great many skilled radiologists who would not attempt to treat a patient with malignant disease where an operation was likely to be effective.

“Tire application of X-rays has a definite place in the treatment of cancer,’’ Dr. Kelly remarks, “ but the claims made in the past have, in the light of more recent experience, proved to be somewhat exaggerated, or the results misunderstood. It is wasted effort to treat cancer by X-rays when complete removal is possible. There is no doubt that some cancers have been cured by X-rays alone, but in nearly all the cure could have been more surely effected by surgery. Dr. Kelly scoffs at “quacks” who claim, among other things, that cancer can be prevented by returning to normal methods of living. Peonle who make such claims, he says, do not know that animals, and even fish, whose habits of living have never varied, suffer from cancer.