Cancer

“ For many years I have been teaching in my lectures and writings as well as in private advice to patients that cancer is a constitutional disease; that it is rooted in every drop of blood in the body; that it is caused by the presence of certain disease taints or of food and drug poisons in the system; that these poisons irritate and stimulate the cells in a certain locality and cause their abnormal multiplication or proliferation in the forms of benign or malignant tumors. ”

“ What is a Cancer?
It is a hard, painful, and ulcerous Tumour, produc'd by an adult Humour, the Malignity whereof can scarce be suppress'd by any Remedies.
How many sorts of Cancers are there?
There are two kinds, viz. The Primitive and the Degenerate; the Primitive Cancer is that which comes of it self, and appears at first about the bigness of a Pea or Bean, which nevertheless doth not cease to cause an inward Pain, continual, and pricking by intervals; during this time it is call'd an Occult Cancer; but when grown bigger, and open'd, it bears the Name of an Ulcerated Cancer ”

“ Cancer is commonest in those organs which have soonest finished their work—the reproductive organs of women; and, after these, it appears most often in that organ so much more abused than any other—the stomach.
The greatest number of cases appears at or after fifty, and therefore at that age it behoves us, not to wait and see whether we shall get it or not, but to look and see that we have not got it, for of people who survive till the age of fifty, a great many more than ten per cent. die of cancer. ”

“ Cancer is but a deviation from the normal life and action of certain of the ordinary cells of the body, which, for some reason, difficult to understand, take on an abnormal or morbid action: with this there is a continued tendency in them to a malignancy which invades contiguous tissue, associated with a pernicious anemia which in the end tends to destroy life. ”

“ We have seen in the former lecture that cancer is not a definite something, from without, that attacks the human frame, but that it is only a faulty development and action of certain body cells, which were once normal, with a steady decline in bodily health which tends to a fatal issue in a very large proportion of those once affected with the disease. ”

“ The occurrence of cancer is still too common, and the suffering it causes is incalculable. As we stand on the threshold of a new millennium, let us draw strength from the successes of the past and reaffirm our determination to treat, prevent, and ultimately eradicate cancer. ”

“ In Cancers we have but little Reason to expect a Cure in a Person that is old, if the Cancer has been of many Years standing, and is firmly fixed to the Ribs; but if the Patient be not so far advanced in Years as to be uncapable of receiving the Benefit of Nature by the regular Discharge of the Menses and the Cancer be loose; notwithstanding, it be Ulcerated, over-spread with fungous Flesh, discharge a filthy Matter, and smell very offensively; we do upon Experience affirm that such a Patient may be cured. ”

“ While cancer is often called the disease Americans fear most, it is also now one of the most manageable chronic diseases in our country. We are approaching the day when, through surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, half of the most serious forms of cancer can be cured. ”

“ For when it is universally realized that it is the errors of life, determined and accentuated by advanced civilization, so-called, which lead up to and cause cancer, and when public education has been advanced along correct lines, the tendency to cancer will diminish and there will be fewer cases, either operable or inoperable. The former will melt away under correct internal and external measures, and the latter will be helped by, or slowly yield to the same, unless the malignant process has already progressed beyond the possibility of retrogressive metabolism. ”

“ But I shall be satisfied if I have excited your interest sufficiently to cause you to investigate the medical aspects of cancer, in which lies the real problem of its prevention and cure. Surgery has been tried faithfully by many brilliant and honest men, some of whom now and then acknowledge the failure of the knife to arrest the steadily increasing mortality from the 270disease, which is now about 90 per cent of all those once attacked. ”

“ It is certainly true that, in the British Isles, the number of deaths certified each year as due to cancer of one form or another is gradually and steadily increasing, both absolutely and relatively to the population. But then we have in the first place, to consider whether cancer is not diagnosed more frequently in ratio to the cases seen than was formerly the case, and, in the second, to remember that cancer is, on the whole, a disease suffered during the second half of life. ”

“ There is, of course, no single medicine which can cure cancer, but proper medication plays a very important part in overcoming the disease and should never be neglected or interrupted in any case; indeed, one suffering from or threatened with cancer should be under the most careful medical guidance indefinitely, and this is especially true after the surgical removal of the tumor, or local manifestation of the morbid process, as Abernethy so strongly asserted, nearly a hundred years ago. ”

“ Thus, all are pretty well agreed that cancer is not contagious or infectious, that it is not caused by a micro-organism or parasite, that it is not wholly due to local injury, that it does not appertain to any particular occupation, that it is not hereditary to any great degree, that it does not especially belong to or affect any particular sex, race or class of persons, nor is it confined to any location or section of the earth, and that it is not wholly a disease of older age. ”

“ Too often when a cancer is suspected or discovered it is taken as a foregone conclusion that the malady is hopeless, except as the results of the disease, that is the new growth, may be removed by the knife, X-ray, radium, caustics, etc. And after a surgical operation, as far as my observation goes, the patients are invariably left entirely to their own resources, with the hope, alas, too often futile, that the tumor will not regrow, but with no attempt to so guide the life that there shall not be the same tendency to a recurrent malignant new-formation. ”

“ In my former lectures I attempted to show that all experience and biochemical laboratory studies looked this way, and in a later lecture I shall hope to show that by dietary, hygienic, and medicinal measures the disease can be and has been checked repeatedly, and cancer cured without surgical operation. The permanence of the cure depends, of course, upon the continued faithful adherence of the patient to the means and measures which caused the dissipation of the tumor. ”

“ We see, thus, that cancer is not primarily a surgical affection, and that the mere ablation of an offending portion of the body which has become diseased can never preclude a new portion from becoming affected, or prevent a recurrence in the same location; indeed, this often seems to be stimulated and increased by the trauma and by the deranged lymphatic and vascular circulation caused by the operation and the dissemination of actively growing cancer cells through these channels. ”

“ Cancer, as popularly understood, does not represent a distinct disease, such as pneumonia, small-pox, or diphtheria, but the name suggests only some terrible malady of an eating or destructive nature, often, if not generally, terminating fatally after a period of great suffering. Among the medical profession the term cancer has been in time past, and to a certain extent is to-day, applied somewhat carelessly to a variety of diseases, or morbid conditions, presenting the feature of destruction of tissue to a greater or less extent ”

“ An early superficial cancer on the free part of the tongue should be, and is, curable in practically all cases. The general conviction of the incurability of cancer is founded on the results of operation on the average fairly advanced case and, until this conviction is shaken, I fear the public will remain relatively indifferent and pessimistic as to the advantages of early treatment. ”

“ But there has been an endeavor to study the fundamental causes of the disease along biochemical lines, and to meet intelligently the errors found. We have seen cancer developing more and more as the ill effects of modern civilization have manifested themselves, and have found 119that its increase has kept pace coincidently with and even exceeded that shown by certain other diseases, cardiac, arterial, and renal, which are recognized as due to errors of living; and there is every reason to believe that cancer is of the same origin. ”

“ The mode in which cancer causes death depends to a large extent upon its situation. In the gullet, for example, it usually causes death by starvation; in the larynx or thyreoid, by suffocation; in the intestine, by obstruction of the bowels; in the uterus, prostate, and bladder, by haemorrhage or by implication of the ureters and kidneys. Independently of their situation, however, cancers frequently cause death by giving rise to a progressive impairment of health known as the _cancerous cachexia_, a condition which is due to the continued absorption of poisonous products from the tumour. ”

“ It may happen, therefore, that in treating a cancer patient over the long time necessary to effect a cure, the greatest number and variety of remedies may be employed from time to time, as intelligent observation and experience may indicate, to restore and hold the metabolism and nutrition in a perfectly normal state: the erroneous action of certain individual body cells which in the aggregate we call cancer, will then cease to exist, as is seen in cured cases. ”

“ In our study thus far we have seen that there is much to be done for cancer besides the surgical removal of the offending mass, the existence of which is an opprobrium to medical science, which has not thus far guarded mankind against it: and until time has passed, and by right living and proper medical attention cancer has ceased to be produced, or become greatly diminished, surgery will probably be a great factor in its treatment, as its mortality statistics are constantly improving. ”

“ METABOLISM OF CANCER In the first lecture we saw that cancer was an alteration of the normal cells of the body, whereby they take on a malignant action and continue to do so, destroying contiguous tissues and leading to a lowered vitality, with an apparent poisoning of the system, which finally causes death. ”

“ Realizing, then, that the mortality of cancer is materially and steadily rising, in spite of most diligent research by innumerable honest and capable scientists, with the expenditure of vast sums of money and 89countless animal lives, and in spite of the work of ardent, earnest, and capable surgeons, who have failed to stay the terrible progress of the disease, let us briefly study some of the reported statistics in regard to the results of operative interference in cancer. ”

“ Patients with a cancer just beginning will often, or even generally, seem to be 35in excellent health. It is indeed remarkable to observe how commonly patients with beginning breast cancer will seem to be in a splendid condition of health. They are ruddy and blooming in appearance, and when the lump is first discovered it is hard indeed to believe that if the erroneous life processes which caused the cancerous lesion to develop are not checked, the patient will before long succumb to the direful disease. ”

“ The most important of these is chronic irritation. We find that almost every cancer is preceded for a longer or shorter period by what may be called a precancerous condition. The more our knowledge increases the more we are finding out that this holds good.
The commonest sites for cancer are the womb, the breast, and the stomach. These together account for more than [59] sixty per cent. of all cancers, and far below them in frequency we find the tongue, the lip, and the bowel, and the various glands. ”

“ We now know that so-called secondary cancers are the result of the spread of cancer cells from the original seat of the cancer to other parts of the body, and that this spread is much hindered by the ability of the lymph nodes to catch the cancer cells and hold them. Unfortunately sooner or later some of the cells will escape beyond the lymph nodes and so spread the malignant growth throughout the body, but until this happens the cancer is confined to the region where it started, and it is during this period that complete cure by surgical means is possible. ”

“ Eoughly we may however classify the various cancers in those derived from epithelial tissue (for instance of the skin, stomach, uterus, the various glands) which we call carcinomata and those derived from proliferating connective tissue cells. Connective tissue in any part of the body may give rise to cancer. These connective tissue cancers are called sarcoma. The growth of a cancer exerts injurious influences on the organism as a whole. ”

“ When to Suspect Cancer and What to Do.—External or Exposed Cancer.—Cancer of the exposed or surface parts of the body, such as the skin of the lip, nose, cheek, forehead, temples, etc., is more readily recognized than internal cancer, and is therefore more liable to early operation and prompt cure. One rarely sees these forms of cancer in an advanced stage, because such cases are readily seen and recognized by physicians in the early stage of development, when operation can be sufficiently early to effect a lasting cure. ”