CANCER. 189 







same cause that the female imbecile and the prostitute 

 are barren, viz., because she has reached a state of 

 degeneracy at which Nature refuses to continue the 

 race. 



Unfortunately cancer is one of those diseases which 

 in the vast majority of cases does not make itself 

 known until late in life, and many who bear within 

 them, and convey to their children, the tendency to 

 this disease, die of some other affection, without ever 

 becoming aware of the curse they have borne about 

 with them through life, and handed on to their 

 children. To this fact is to be attributed those 

 numerous cases where we find several children, of 

 parents who have died without displaying a sign of 

 cancer, dying one after another of malignant disease. 

 On this subject Sir James Paget remarks : " 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. But 

 this number does not nearly represent what we may 

 very safely assume to be the predominance of inheri- 

 tance of cancer. A large number of persons die of 

 internal cancer, and convey it to their offspring, 

 though it is never known that they themselves have 

 been the subjects of cancer, or, at least, is never 

 recorded. A large number more die before they have 

 manifested the cancerous disposition which is in them- 

 selves ; for, paradoxical as it may seem, if a man have 

 not outlived the utmost age of man, we are bound 

 not to believe that he might not have been the 



