DIED FROM CANCER

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20510, 28 May 1938, Page 13

DIED FROM CANCER

A SURGEON’S DIARY PROGRESS OF DISEASE RECORDED \ i i (Times Air .Mail Service.) LONDON. May 5 | Mi* Percy Furnival. consulting sur- ; geon to the London Hospital, died yesterday at his home at Northam, Devon, aged 7i.’ He was a specialist : on cancer; lie died from the most | painful foitn of that disease—cancer ‘ of the throat. • Knowing what the ultimate end 1 must be he kept a day-to-day diary during the 14 months of his illness. It was not written out of self-pity, but so that other surgeons might : learn from his sufferings. Mr Furnival was wintering in Jam- ! aica last year, and one February morn- j ing he noticed a roughness at the back : of his throat. He diagnosed; left at , once for New York and expert atten- , tion. Radium , treatment was prescribed. On February 22 lie made this note in his diary: “ 1 am Oft 1 in. weight lOJst without clothes, aged 7(>. Could play a daily round of 18 holes at golf or drive a car all day without being tired.” He had been an athlete from his youth. On February 4 this year lie wrote in his diary: “ I have not been dressed or out of my house and garden for the last six months. I can only walk about 200 yards, and am a bent and feeble old man.” AVitli greatest care lie described each development of his illness, noted the technicalities that surgeons could not obtain from other patients.