The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-11-30
SCIENCE STILL BAFFLED BY MANY MYSTERIOUS DISEASES

no known cure for it. However, there is one remedy which" and then he would launch into & detailed description of treatment by means of his charactistics of the ma jority of physicians that in disease for which there Is no known specific (and specifics are few each shows enthusiasm for some method of treatment that has served him well. Cancer UnsoIved Menace.
 Just so long as there is no known cure for any disease, then that di- sease possesses mysterious phases. The mystery increases in proportion to the extent to which the disease irvades the population of the world.
 Both cause and cure for many ail- ments which were mysteries prior 10 the dawn of this century have been discovered. In times long past the cure of disease was given over to the functions of sorcerers, magicians' nriests and astrologers, with their amuIets, charms and weird botlons' Rnt the physioIogist, anatomist, bac- teriologist, chemist, microscoplst' pathologist and physician have ele- vated medicine from an art to science.
 Cancer, since the entrenchment Of civilization has been the universal
  Not only has it's cause never been satisfactorily determined nor a spe- cffic cure for it discovered, but In spite of the concerted endeavor or the medical profession 1t steadily Tn creases Some insist that it is purely 8 disease of civilization and result of wrong methods of living, attribut- ing it chiefly to errors of diet. 9th CTS assert that it is a germ disease, and two of three investigators at different times have declared their belief that they had isolated the par ticular species of bacteria responsi- ble for it. Others assert (and this stheory has many adherents) that cancer is the manifestation of em- bryonic cells run riot; that when sub jected to prolonged irritation-to heat, for example as in the lip can cers of pipe smokers-thes cells de- velop abnormal growth and carry on their work of devastation
 Thinks Mnlady Infectious.
 A few weeks ago Dr. Hugh Camp bell Ross. distinguished British can cer research worker. speaking on this very point in Montreal. stated his conviction that cancer was not hered- itary, but that it was infectious and that therefore it should be made notifiable disease and that whenever possible cancer patients should be isolated with view to the ultimate prevention of the disease.
 Cancer, he declared, was disease which. in part at least, was caused by d germ or some agent derived outside the body which had to be imported into a community before the disease could occur there. He based part of his argument on these facts: Stef- ansson and other explorers as well as medical men and missionaries had declared that Eskimos were not af- flicted with cancer; and also that his own investigations had shown that cancer had not developed among the population of Pitcairn Island since the landing of the mutineers of the bounty in 17S9. Yet both Eskimos and Pitcairn Islanders, he asserted, were descended from cancerous stock the former from the Chinese and the latter from the English and Ia hitians. Their isolation. he said. had saved them from the ravages of this disease.
 Almost everything known to medi- cine and surgery has been tried at