730 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 
four years, it has never received, and it certainly has,not now 
the support of the profession, which a treatment, if success 
ful, almost always secures. This one thing we know about 
carcinoma—that it is not contagious, and only infective in 
the already cancerous. All means have been tried to convey 
this disease to animals, and probably the attempt to do so 
to man has also been made, although, from the nature of the 
circumstances, these) instances have never been published. 
This looks very unlike the disease being of parasitical origin. 
Quite recently, a medical man in Melbourne has en- 
deavoured to show that cancer is due to defective glandular 
secretion. The theory is not exactly a new one—Is there 
anything new under the sun!—but it has been more 
pointedly put than has hitherto been done. _ He says the 
bile secretion contains a soap which acts as a solvent on 
cholesterine, and that it is the crystallisation of this gub- 
stance out of the living cell that constitutes cancer. His 
arguments are too long for this paper, but the point that I 
wish to bring under your notice is his suggestion, that the 
absence of salt, as an article of diet, may have much to do 
with the cause of this disease, and that its increase may be 
attributed to the much larger consumption of sugar, displac- 
ing salt. He also surmises that drinking rain-water, or, as 
he terms it, ““demineralised water,’ may have much to do 
with malignancy. I cannot give an opinion on these points, 
but, as cancer is such a fearful disease, I think that any- 
thing and everything bearing on its cause or cure should be 
brought forward. 
We come now to Tuberculosis, which causes more misery 
and poverty than all other diseases put together. Tubercle, 
with the various maladies its invasion occasions, has been 
very much to the front of late, through the meeting of the 
British Congress on the subject, and the prominent place 
this interesting topic has taken in, the general press at 
Home, at one time, almost to the exclusion of everything 
else except the Boer war. The subject is just one that the 
public can understand when placed before them in a popular 
manner. I never remember anything to have engrossed 
the general mind so much as this has done. Those who 
read, professionally or otherwise, Professor Koch’s address, 
must have enjoyed an interesting discourse. Some of the 
remarks were certainly most astonishing. For instance, 
those on the descent of tubercle. They were most upset- 
ting; so opposed to all preconceived opinions. Medicine at 
times is most) bewildering. We frequently, after careful 
consideration, come to a certain conclusion, which, for a 
time, is universally accepted, then someone provides us ‘with 
