i8o MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



Ireland, though considerably less afflicted with the 

 disease than other parts of the kingdom, also shows a 

 steady increase during the past ten years. According 

 to Dr. Fordyce Barker, the condition of affairs is 

 almost the same in America as with us in the United 

 Kingdom. The mortality from cancer had increased 

 in New York from 400 to the million in 1875 to 530 

 to the million in 1885. In commenting upon this fact 

 Dr. Barker remarks, that the disease is much less 

 frequent among the negroes than the whites, and that 

 the mortality from cancerous disease is largest "in 

 those nations which are the most advanced in civilisa- 

 tion," or, in other words, in those peoples who interfere 

 most with the laws which govern natural life. 



And now as to the cause of this disease and of its 

 increase among civilised nations. As to the origin of 

 the disease, I may say at once nothing is known. 

 Cancer has been known and feared from very early 

 times, and various theories as to its cause have been 

 advanced from time to time, but none has met with 

 anything like general acceptance. Recently the vege- 

 tarian faddists have advanced and strongly maintained 

 the theory that cancer is the result of a diet too largely 

 composed of animal food ; but this theory has nothing 

 whatever to support it, and is at once disposed of by 

 the fact that the death-rate from cancer is actually 

 higher in Scotland, where the diet of the majority is 

 very largely vegetable, than in England, where it is 

 as largely animal. If this theory were true, the dis- 

 ease would have been rife among such peoples as the 



