The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, May 8, 1909. CANCER RESEARCH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 458, 8 May 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, May 8, 1909. CANCER RESEARCH.

Spraking at the annual meeting of the Court of Governors of the Middlesex Hospital on February 25, Dr. Eazarus-Barlow, director of the Cancer Research Eaboratories, gave an account of the work done in the laboratories since their opening in 1900. He referred to investigations upon heredity in cancer, and said that examination of the records of 8000 cancer cases of which the hospital had notes, showed that there was no evidence that the disease was inherited. From the point of view of life assurance, and of allaying a general ’ fear, this work was of great public utility. One great difficulty was the natural impatience of the public -at the slow rate of progress. But the cancer question was bound up with the laws of growth. Why the cancer started at all, why it was some-

times localised at one spot, sometimes disseminated widely through the body, why it killed, how it killed, were questions to which no sure answer had hitherto been given. Yet the cure or the prevention of cancer depended upon the answers to those questions. Some day the cause of cancer would be made known, and the first and greatest step towards its cure would have been taken. The feeling among the staff of the cancer laboratories was that the greatest joy that they could imagine would be theirs if the Middlesex Hospital, which showed the way to the world in the establishment of cancer research, could also show the way in discovering the cause of cancer and its cure. His staff was enthusiastic in their work, but enthusiasm would not do every-

thing ; they needed money. Two thousand five hundred pounds per annum was little enough to pay in order to keep their ten highly qualified scientists at work trying to find the cause of, and the cure of, a disease that claimed over 30,000 victims annually in England and Wales.