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CONTENTS

PAGE
LECTURE I
Cancer as a Medical or Surgical Disease[19]
LECTURE II
Influence of Sex, Age, Occupation, Race, Climate, and Food on Cancer[47]
LECTURE III
The Mortality from Cancer; Analysis of Surgical Statistics.[74]
LECTURE IV
Inoperable and Recurrent Cancer; Metastasis; The Blood in Cancer[111]
LECTURE V
Dietetic and Medical Treatment of Cancer Prophylaxis[144]
LECTURE VI
Results: Personal Cases[188]
SUMMARY
The Real Cancer Problem[239]
Index[273]

CANCER

ITS

CAUSE AND TREATMENT

LECTURE I
CANCER AS A MEDICAL OR SURGICAL DISEASE

In my lectures given here two years ago I considered, as far as I could in the time allowed, the nature of cancer,[[1]] and the evidence in favor of its being a medical rather than a purely surgical disease; and in order that the trend of what shall follow may be clearly understood, brief reference may be made to some of the principal points studied and developed in the preceding lectures. To this end I may restate the conclusions presented at their close, as developed in the lectures, perhaps with some alterations or additions which two years’ further study, observation, and treatment of cancer may suggest.

1. 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.

2. There is some reason to believe that this diseased action first takes place in what are known as “embryonic rests” or pre-natal, wrongly placed tissue elements. These latter, however, are now shown to exist in every individual in many localities, but the reason why at some particular time they take on this malignant action, and form cancer, has not yet been satisfactorily explained.