CHAPTER XIII. 



CANCER. 



" The more I have seen of cancer as occurring among families 

 where the family history is known, the greater becomes the number 

 of cases in which well-marked inheritance can be traced. . . . Now 

 I can without difficulty count as actual facts not less than one in 

 three of the patients with cancer in whose families the occurrence 

 of cancer is well known." SIR JAMES PAGET.* 



" We cannot over-estimate the importance of inheritance in the 

 origination of cancer." SIR WILLIAM AiTKEN.t 



CANCER is at once the most painful, revolting, and 

 fatal of diseases. It spares neither age nor sex, neither 

 rich nor poor. The emperor in his palace and the 

 pauper in his crib are equally within its reach. Once 

 it has marked a person for its own, it clings relent- 

 lessly to its victim until the grave closes over him ; and 

 on the journey thither, which is sometimes long, it too 

 often racks him with excruciating pain, and renders him 

 fruch a pitiable and loathsome object, that his friends pray 

 in secret for his emancipation at the hand of death. 



Cancer is a disease for which there is no cure known. 

 The knife of the surgeon is our only hope. In cases 

 judiciously chosen, early extirpation, where that is 



* Pathological Soc. Trans., 1874, vol. xxv, p. 317. 

 t Op. tit. 



