376 Kansas Academy of Science. 



CANCER: THOUGHTS ON. 



By J. M. Mc Wharf, Ottawa. 



CHANCER and its treatment presents many suggestive questions. 

 ■^ Our present knowledge of its pathology and treatment is in- 

 deed very meager. 



While we consider the subject for a little time I afek that you 

 drop preconceived opinions, and remove any and all prejudice, that 

 we may study the real scientific or pathological history of cancer 

 as we find it to-day. Preconceived opinions, unless founded upon 

 facts, are of no real value. 



Every disease save that of cancer is practically on the decrease, 

 while cancer is on the increase, and to such an extent that it will 

 before long give us a mortality annually greater than consumption 

 and typhoid fever combined. In 1890. its death-rate in the United 

 States was 1(^.536. In 1900, or ten years later, it had increased 

 nearly one-third, or, in round numbers, to 29,475. We find that 

 after having passed the age of forty-five one out of every twelye 

 women and one out of every twenty-one men die from this most 

 dreaded malady. In 1900 the city of New York gave a mortality 

 of 724 men and 1336 women who perished from cancer. In 1900 

 there were 29,475 deaths from cancer in the United States, or a 

 death-rate of 60 per 100,000 population. Upon the same basis 

 England produced a death-rate of 82, Ireland 61, Prussia 61, Hol- 

 land 91, and Norway 84. In one decade it has increased 30 per 

 cent. Professor Parks, of Buffalo, N. Y., claims that if this ratio 

 of deaths continues until 1909 we shall have a greater mortality 

 from cancer than that given by consumption, smallpox and typhoid 

 fever combined. 



Some fifty years ago cancer produced 1 death in 129 ; to-day it 

 is 1 in 25 or 30. This suggests sober, earnest thought at the hands 

 of the medical profession. Evidently cancer has a separate and 

 distinct individuality not yet brought into our field of vision. 



The world's greatest pathologists have studied and investigated 

 along this line for ages, but to-day the outlook presents nothing 

 hopeful^or flattering. The outcome of investigation and discussion 

 has produced two classes in the medical profession — one that holds 

 directly"to the idea of heredity, while the other couples infection 

 and contagion with heredity. 



In this discussion it is not my desire to'take a positive stand with 



