THE PREVENTION AND CURE OF CANCER 297 



The answer must be, I think, that there is nothing inherent in 

 the nature of the malady that makes it necessarily fatal (the re- 

 sults of animal experimentation appear to justify this verdict) ; 

 but that, on the other hand, it is implied in the very nature of 

 the condition that unless there can be a radical readjustment of 

 the relations of the individual to his environment, the case is 

 hopeless. 



Merely to cut out the local neoplasm, and hope thus to cure 

 the disease, is a childish procedure. The surgeon tells you that if 

 you make the incision early enough and radical enough, all will 

 be well. But, of course, you can never make the incision early 

 enough nor radical enough. You could, to be sure, eradicate 

 cancer of the uterus by universal hysterectomy in childhood, and 

 annul cancer of the breast by universal amputation of infantile 

 mammae. But such a procedure would have no conspicuous bear- 

 ing on the cancerous condition, and would not in any way shield 

 the organs that remained. 



It is true that most surgeons claim a considerable proportion 

 of "cures" following their operative procedures, particularly for 

 cancer of the breast. But very few surgeons have cared to pub- 

 lish statistics as to the post-operative history of their cases, ex- 

 tending over a term of years. One surgeon of my personal ac- 

 quaintance admits that when he attempted to follow up his cases 

 he found that very few indeed were living three years after the 

 operation, and only a single case after a lapse of five years. 



Whether or not we accept that as a typical experience, it will 

 be denied by no one that the usual and, so to say, expected his- 

 tory of a cancer case after operation is characterized by meta- 

 static recurrence ; that after a second and perhaps a third opera- 

 tion the case reaches an inoperable stage; and that inoperable 

 cancer is universally regarded as among the most hopeless of 

 conditions. 



Speaking with the utmost conservatism, we can now say that 

 experience justifies the statement that the Proteal treatment has 

 come with at least a message of hope for these supposedly hope- 

 less cases. As regards actual and permanent eradication of the 

 diseased condition, doubtless this applies to only a small percen- 

 tage of the cases hitherto treated by the new method. But that 

 is merely equivalent to saying that the major part of the cases 

 thus treated have been individuals whose systems were in so 

 profound a state of disrepair that in the nature of the case they 

 could not be mended. 



Researches at the Mayo Clinic have made it clear to what an 

 alarming extent changes that may be considered cancerous in 

 character occur in other organs of the body than those directly 

 effected either by the original neoplasm or by definite metastases. 



