Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1905-05-06
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the plague since the latest outbreak,
and there are 10000 cases n week,
ninety per cent. of which are fatal.
In Europe such conditions prevailed at
the time Of the Black Death, but under
modern sanitary conditions the plague
Is no serious menace, as recent expert
ence in San Francisco and Australia
has shown Typhoid fever is still prev
alent, but so easily preventable that,
as q medical man has said, for every
fatal case of it somebody ought to be
hanged for criminal carelessness. The
ravages Of consumption, diphtherla and
many other fatal maladies have been
greatly decreased
There are, however, deadly diseases
that have hitherto batiled all the skill
and ingenuity of medical observers and
experimenters. At this moment con-
siderable alarm Is leftover the startling
increase in the number of cases Of cere-
| bro-splnal meningitis, of which we
surely know neither the cause nor the
cure. But the disease which mas re-
sisted most obstinately is cancer. Five
years ago, when the cancer mortality in
this county was 10000, making it rank
MS the eighth disease in the order of
fatalities, an aggressive campaign was
organized simultaneously in America
and several European countries. In
England the Prince who is now King
personally assumed the Presidency of
the Cancer Research Fund: In Ger
many cancer research laboratories
were founded in several cities, and in
this country a bequest made by Mrs.
Caroline Brewer Croft led to the forma-
ton of commission Of pathologlsts
for carrying on research work in the
laboratories Of Harvard University and
the hospitals in Boston. The third re-
port of this commission Is the latest
official utterance on the subject, yet it
must be said that it does little except
deepen the mystery surrounding this
terrible disease.
In the last Harvard Graduates Maya
zine, Edward II. Nichols discusses the
work of the Harvard committee, and is
obliged to confess at the end that it
has on the whole been destructive and
not constructive" 1t has shown, he
thinks, that the idea that cancer is due
to a parasitic yeast is erroneous; 1t
has shown that the peculiar cancer
bodies are not protocol, and are not
parasites, but are due to a modified Sc
erection in cancer cells. "Some foreign
observers have shown that it is posi-
bic to transplant certain type of can
Ger from one animal to another of the
same species, but this transference rep
resents transplantation of cells, not in
lection ~ a parasite. And they have
produced serum which inhibts the
growth of a peculiar type of animal
cancer, but no one has produced
serum of n character which has any
effect upon human cancer" In view
of the great dimlnution in. diphtheria
mortality since the employment of the
serum treatment, this result is most
dlscouraging. The Harvard committee
Inclines to accept Cohnheim's hypoth-
esis that cancer is due to malign cell
growth.
At the same time, it would be I'M
wise to halt a moment in the efforts to
detect the secret Of malignant disease
As DR.. Mayo Robson of the Royal Col
Iege of Surgeons remarked in recent
lecture: "How many years were spent
in fruitless search before Koch found
the tubercle bacillus?-a discovery that
has placed tuberculosis on quite an
other platform, and one which bids
fair to the stamping out of the disease.
Does any one doubt the origin of
measles, scarlet fever, or syphilis from
organisms, yet how much uncertainty
there isw He makes the interesting
suggestion that the cause Of the eccen-
tricities of the cancer may lie in or
ganisms infinitely smaller than the
smallest micrOcoccus, and he calls at
tention in connection with this to the
recent startling enlargement of the
power of microscopes, which would
make the eye of a fly, for instance, APP
pear as an object twenty feet long
by thirteen broad.
The discovery, within few years, of
the mosquito as a carrier of yellow
fever and malaria, suggests the wisdom
of making the field of research as wide
as possible, and exploring every nook
and corner of the woods where Grim
inal disease turks. Who knows but
that insects are the provoking cause
Of cancer? A case is on record of a |
man being bitten on the cheek by a |
large fly in the exact spot where in a |
short time an epithelioma grew; and |
Moran showed that by introducing |
heas which had occupied the cages of |
cancerous mice into cages occupied by |
healthy mice, the latter with few ex-
ceptions developed cancer. For the |
present, too, 1t may be wise not to dis
card the notion that the cancer germ |
may come into the system with insult
ficlently washed, uncooked vegetables.
The tomato theory is, of course, the
veriest nonsense; If tomatoes were the
cause of cancer there would be 10000
cases in this country to one in Ger
many. But, regarding vegetables in
general, the observations of DR.. Bella
are suggestive. In the town of Luckau
he found that in about quarter of
century there were no cancer cases at
all III part OF the pace Whlcn lies
over sandy, dry soil, while they were
frequent in the part that is pierced by
a stream of semi-stagnant water, from
which all the gardens are watered.
Usually, physicians deprecate the dis
cussion Of medical topics if the press,
but in the case of cancer they make an
exception. They want everybody to
know that drugs have never healed
cancer, that X-rays are useful only in
certain superficial cases. and that the
only chance of real cure Is offered by
prompt excelsior in the early stages.
Professor Duhrssen, of Berlin, has re-
peatedly implored the journalists of his
country to call the attention of their
readers to the fact that in Germany