The Halford Oration

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1055, 20 August 1930, Page 8

The Halford Oration

ADDRESS ON CANCER RESEARCH AT the University of Sydney, tlie Halford Oration, to commemorate the life and the work of George Britton Halford, represents an advance in authoritative addresses on questions of science. New Zealand, as a country affected by the scourge of cancer, has especial interest in the second oration, given h\ Professor D. A. Welsh, Lecturer in Pathology, to commemorate the 105th anniversary of the birth of ITalford.

Professor Welsh spoke on aspects I of the cancer problem and concluded with this appeal: “There is a higher type of courage which is born of higher ideals of responsibility and of duty, which loses nothing of its high idealism by being linked to common sense. That higher courage will face the possibility of cancer at the earliest threatening sign and will take up the fight against that enemy of mankind. We doctors need the help of our patients in fighting the Scourge of cancer just as much as they need our help.” The first Halford Oration was delivered at Canberra in November last year. George Britton Halford, in 1562, was selected as “a gentleman of suitable attainments to fill the chair of anatomy, physiology and pathology,” and, in 1863, he delivered his first lecture in the first medical school to be founded in Australia, the University of Melbourne. Instancing the great work for Australia by Halford, Professor Welsh said Halford came into a world of awakened scientific effort, for, from 1846 onward, there had appeared the rational pathology of Henle, the cellular pathology of Virchow, the chemical pathology of Ehrlich, and the general and experimental pathology of Cohnheim. The work of Pasteur in revealing the activities of the microbe made possible the revolution in surgery accomplished by Lister. Pasteur’s work was supplemented by the technical ingenuity of Koch, and there were Jenner's vaccination against smallpox and Behring’s antitoxin in diphtheria. Halford had filled his part as an original thinker and worker, particularly in experimental medicine.

Dealing with the modern efforts toward cancer research, Professor Welsh said it was not a campaign in which scientists and doctors alone should try. All people should be concerned in the work. On the efforts to determine the causes of cancer, Professor Welsh gave this opinion: "The conception of cancer toward which I am most strongly inclined is that the development of cancer within the human body may not be so purposeless as we are apt to imagiue. Cancer may be the expression of some need which develops most often as age advances: so, if we could understand that need and do something to satisfy ’ it, we

might be able to prevent the growth of cancer. Perhaps we take too much for granted .in assuming that cancer arises independently of the needs of the rest of the body. Its objects may be compensatory and defensive, though its results are disastrous. Now that is an important conception, because, if it should be true, it indicates one of the ways in which it might be possible to prevent and to control cancer. There is, indeed, much evidence in support of this view, particularly in the genesis of that most important group of cancers, the cancers that take origin from the glands or chemical laboratories of the body.'*

Professor Welsh pointed out that the one thing certain in the causation of cancer was that there was no. single and specific known cause. When “causes” of cancer were spoken of, only certain predisposing and accessory factors which in some way not understood were related to the origin of cancer were meant. These causes included hereditary predisposition, age and senescence, embryological faults, irritation and injury, and biochemical stimuli. “If there is one fact of which we have clear and certain knowledge, it is that early cancer is often curable,” Professor Welsh continued. “Yet. iu this enlightened age, one is astounded at the extent to which patients will allow cancers to grow before they seek advice.”

Referring to the necessity for research, Professor Welsh said it had been recognised that research was not antagonistic to cancer treatment. Rather must treatment be ever animated and guided by research. All the present methods of treatment fell lamentably short of what they were wanted to be. The hope was that research would open up fresh avenues of thought and so lead to better methods of treatment or prevention.

Throughout the world, workers in all departments of science were writing the life history of cancer, so that modern cancer research now covered an immense field. Cancer was one of the penalties man must pay, not for his advancing civilisation, not for his mode of living (except in so far as his indiscretions predisposed cancer), but for his higher biological development.

[“Chapters in the Life History of Cancer” has been published by the Australasian Medical Publishing Company, Limited. Sydney. Our copy is from Angus and Robertson, Sydney.!