CANCER TREATMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 January 1943, Page 5

CANCER TREATMENT

RECOGNITION OF SYMPTOMS. RELIEF AND CURE POSSIBLE. (By the New Zealand Branch of the British Empire Cancer Campaign.) The organs of the reproductive system in women are unfortunately prone to malignant disease —the breast, the ovary and the womb are examples. Whether this is linked up with their vital importance to the race, or with the extraordinary rises and falls in the tides of their activity in women, is hard to say. In the womb ,two forms of cancer occur, the one utterly different from the other. The commoner by far occurs at the outlet or “cervix,” and the other in the body of the womb. Cancer of the cervix affects almost always women who have borne one or more children, and there is some relation between its occurrence and the tears or lacerations- which occur commonly during childbirth. For this reason it is always advisable to enquire as to whether such lacerations have occurred, and to have them neatly repaired at a suitable opportunity. This cancer occurs most often in the forties, but also in the thirties and fifties. Cancer of the body of the womb, on the other hand, is almost always limited to women who have Been unmarried or who have borne no children. It comes in the forties or fifties, sometimes later. Sometimes it develops after years of pain and suffering at the time of the monthly, period. At other times it arises without, much warning. In both kinds the chief symptom is unusual bleeding, or the discharge of blood-stained watery fluid. In the case of the cervix this goes on, irrespective of the usual period times. In the case of the body, the bleeding, at first at any rate, tends to take the form of prolonged or profuse periods, later becoming continuous. In either case anaemia and general weakness may supervene, but pain and loss of weight and interference with the bladder come later. Inasmuch as these symptoms are much more often due to disorders of the periods from simple—not malignantcauses, such as ovarian disorders and the disorders and the change of life, it is necessary to seek competent advice to ascertain the cause. This should be done as soon as a.definite departure from normal has occurred. In both kinds the prospects from modern treatment in early and fairly early cases are good. Radium is used for the cervix, and operation for the body. Valuable relief can be expected when the case is beyond radical cure,