SYMPOSIUM ON PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEMS 103 
complete cure. Late recognition and delayed treatment al- 
ways means suffering that can not be described by words, or 
written by the pen, and it also means sufficient morphine to 
ease the patient away into, at best, a slow and miserable death. 
The ravages of tuberculosis in all the centuries of the past 
were immeasurably reduced by public education as to the best 
means for its suppression. The same means must be adopted 
to diminish the ruin and waste of good human blood and tissue 
from cancer. In five years, by thorough and persistent teach- 
ing of the public, the physicians of Germany increased the 
number of cancer patients who could be treated with an increas- 
ing hope of relief from forty per cent when they started the 
propaganda, to eighty per cent. 
Reliable statistics show that one out of every eight women 
that we pass in the street and who have reached or passed the 
thirty-fifth year of age, will die of some form of cancer, and 
that one man out of every twelve will die in the same useless 
way. If what was said in the beginning of this paper is true, 
and the best recognized authorities agree that it is true, that 
the beginnings of cancer are always in one little, local spot— 
what is the most practical and hopeful thing to do in order to 
circumvent the trouble? The answer is that every man and 
woman should be thoroughly and completely examined twice 
a year after they are twenty-five years of age. 
From its practical side we do not consider it incongruous to 
see a dentist twice a year in order to prevent the pain incident 
to decaying teeth. Why should the same thing not be done 
in order to be sure that cancer is not developing somewhere on 
the outside or under our skins? It is most unfortunate that 
the onset of cancer and tuberculosis is not ushered in by pain 
as one of the very first symptoms, as is true of some forms of 
diseased teeth, instead of its being among the very last of the 
symptoms which close the chapter of life in the sufferer from 
cancer. Pain is a beneficent thing when it starts us on the road 
that will steer us away from the conditions that are back of it 
whether physical or moral. 
In the modern treatment of cancer four methods are recog- 
nized as of value. The selection depends on the stage of the 
disease when the patient first presents himself for treatment. 
