1 78 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



a negative is strong, an attempt was made to explain 

 away the growing figures of the Registrar-General. 

 This, unfortunately, was found impossible. Then it 

 was argued, on the one hand, that there had always 

 been the present amount of cancer among the people, 

 but that, from want of care and knowledge, it had 

 not. been recognised and registered as such ; while 

 some, on the other hand, asserted that the recent 

 advance of scientific knowledge in medicine had so 

 excited the judgment of the younger among medical 

 men, that, in an over-anxiety to display their critical 

 discrimination of abnormal tissues, they had been 

 induced to believe malignant what were in reality 

 benign growths. These arguments answered each 

 other, and as no theory was found sufficient to combat 

 the Registrar-General's hard facts, it was eventually ad- 

 mitted that, from whatever cause, this terrible disease 

 was really increasing in every grade of society. The in- 

 crease was perhaps most marked among the inhabitants 

 of our great centres of population, but that there was an 

 increase, that it was growing steadily, and that it was 

 general, was at length reluctantly admitted. 



Sir Spencer Wells, in his Morton Lectures delivered 

 before the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 

 November 1888, was unable to bring forward any 

 explanation of the increase in the death-rate from 

 cancer satisfactory to himself, and openly acknowledged 

 his acceptance of the belief that cancer was rapidly 

 increasing among our people. In his very excellent 

 lectures Sir Spencer brought forward a more elaborate 



