SCOURGE OF CANCER.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1919, Page 10

SCOURGE OF CANCER.

ITS CAUSES AND CURE. INCREASING DEATH RATE. The scourge of cancer was dealt with by Dr. Florence Keller in a lecture to women given at Auckland last week under the auspices of the Workers' Educational Association.

Of all problems in medicine, said Dr. Keller, cancer was the most baffling and the most, malignant. Its actual cause was as yet unknown; it could develop anywhere, either on the surface or withiy the body, while any condition that refused to lieal, or any raw surface, might in time become tho seat of the diseaseDr. Keller emphasised the great importance of early recognition of the evil, which in incipient stages was curable," while delays were not merely dangerous (jut often deadly. Another important point dealt with svas the alarming increase in the prevalence of cancer in recent years, In England the mortality had increased 50 per cent, in eight years; in New Zealand it had doubled in five years. This was sufficient warning to merit the inost 1 earnest public attention being given to this deadly disease. Public interest and investigation had been brought to bear on tuberculosis and venereal disease, but the scourge of cancer had not as yet been brought sufficiently before people. Dr. Keller dealt with the cause of the disease, describing the transmission of hereditary tendencies, also the evil effects of irritation, either mechanical or chemical. The importance of diet as a curative agency in the early stages of the disease was also dealt with. It had been abundantly proved in experiments with animals, said Dr. Keller, that tumor growths could be arrested by grain and rice diet, while they throve on meat and fat. In the Britisii Medical Journal of September, 1002, Dr. Roger Williams had' stated that of 19,529 deaths among natives in Cairo in the preceding year, only 1!) had been due to cancer, or one in 1029. In England in the same year the deatli-rate of the same disease was one in 29. The fact that cancer was a disease of civilisation, prevalent among the rich and middle classes, was also commented on by the lecturer, who stat- j fed that around the Mediterranean, where the people led a.n outdoor life, associated with poverty and a low meat diet, the death-rate from cancer was the lowest in the world. Neither was it commonly met with in the South Sea Islands, India, or Africa. Pcre Debreyne, medical olticer of the Trappist monks, a vegetarian order of priests in France, had stated that.ho had not met with a single case of cancer in 27 years. The disease, said Dr. Keller, was not confined to the human species, but was also prevalent among fish and animals, necessitating the strictest supervision of all animal foods for human consumption. The lecturer gave a detailed description of preliminary symptoms of tho disease and contributory causes among men and women. Surgery, she concluded, was the first and only sure remedy, and should be resorted to in early stages. After that came radium, with which wonderful cures had been effected, and in .which experiments were still progressing sueoeiafully in other parts of the world;