The Sentinel=record., 1914-05-03
DOCTORS DISCUSS
 CANCER INFECTION
MANY INCIDENTS LEADS TO BE LIEF THAT IT IS ENTIRELY
 A GERM DISEASE.
Successive Deaths Of Occupants of "Canvcr House" Has Caused Large Amount Of Speculation.

London, May 2-Medical men and sanitation experts are taking great interest in the problem as to whether person can become infected with cancer through living in a house in which a cancer victim has lived. For years the question has been a matter of debate and medical literature abounds in references to cancer houses"
 investigation in England has follow ed the report of Dr. Armande. who found that la a village of 400 in habitants in France eleven deaths from cancer occurred in seven years, all being located in the same block of houses. Three years later there were seventeen cancer patients in these houses. In other parts of France, in- cludiag Paris, similar condition was found.
 In Great Britain there are numer- ous cancer houses. There Is a yicarage in the north of England where two. successive incumbents have died of cancer. In large house in Somerset where man died of cancer many years ago, his wife, his wife's second husband, a member or his family by his first wife, and a housekeeper have since fallen vic tims. In another house in Scotland the cancer history extends back three generations An experiment was made there by confining mice in trap. Several of them contracted the dis ease.
 Sir Thomas Oliver, the distingu,1,. ed physician and writer on medical subjects, in a recent address. de clared that the germ theory of cancer was only doubtfully accepted, still it was known that cancer could be con veyed from man to lower animals. Moreover, it was regarded as prob able that just as some persons were particularly susceptible to infectious diseases so some persons might in- herit a peculiar vul1erahlity of the tissues whereby at a particular age they become liable to cancer Could this inheritance of vu'nerability eX- plain some of the facts about cancer houses? In his annual report to the Insurance Institute at Newcastle-on- Tyne Sir Thomas said:
 My attention has been drawn to a series of cases i1 a street not one twelfth of mile long in small town The houses are entirely residential In the fifteen years from 1893 to 1908 there died from cancer in this street nineteen persons and one dog As in all the cases there was no hereditary history of the disease, the large num- Der of deaths among successive occu- pants of the houses has suggested that the matter is more than a CO incidence"
 C. E. Green, another scientist who has studied the subject of cancer be- lieves that 1t is largely due to coal fires. Nairnshire has the highest cancer death rate in Scotland Mir. Green reported in 1912 that the dis tricts of Nairnshre which were free from cancer were those where peat is burned not coal So frequently has ne observed this fact that he is dis posed to attribute the prevalence of cancer to the combustoin of coal rich in sulphur especially where the houses of the people are on sloping sites or in hollows.
 The Easter holidays which the roy al family spent at Windsor Castle, found the Princess Mary. their maies- fies only danphter nninNinn for thn