If experience and special research lead eventually to successful treatment of cancer, it will be a great boon to the human race. The United States leads the world in deaths from this dread disease, with its average of 90 per 100,000 of the population. The mean average of cancer deaths in Europe is 76, in Asia 54, in Africa 33, in Oceania 73. Several races, including the American Indians, are stated to be entirely free from cancer, and others are partially immune. The Japanese, for example, are subject to all forms except cancer of the breast. Eighty-five percent of Americans afflicted with this malady are persons over 40 years of age.
Science Service states that a careful analysis of cancer statistics gathered by the United States Census Bureau over a period of about 20 years in ten Eastern states reveals definitely that cancer mortality is from 25 to 30% higher than it was about 20 years ago. This is the claim of Dr. J. W. Schereschewsky, of the United States Public Health Service, who made the statistical analysis and reported it to the American Medical Association. “There has been a pronounced increase in the observed death rate from cancer in persons 40 years old and over in the ten states comprising the original death registration area,” Dr. Schereschewsky said. “Part of this increase is due to greater precision and accuracy in the filling out of death returns, but the remainder is an actual increase in the mortality of the disease.”
The only way to stop the ravages of cancer, says the Paris Academy of Medicine, is to diagnose it early—in time for operation. For this to be practicable, physicians must be specially instructed. Family doctors are often ignorant of all but a few forms of cancer and do not recognize it in its first manifestations. Women of 40 to 50 are apt to consider little irregularities of bleeding to be associated with the menopause and therefore harmless. Often this is right, but unfortunately the bleeding from an early cancer may not differ in the slightest degree from such harmless irregularities and by the time other symptoms have developed, the cancer has perhaps grown through the wall of the uterus and has spread to regions where no treatment can hope to reach it. The only safe rule to go by is to seek expert investigation for any unusual or irregular bleeding or discharge, however slight, especially if these occur at or near the “change of life.”
One phase of this subject of special interest is that of the use of radium in the treatment of cancer, especially of the neck or lower end of the uterus. There is already sufficient evidence to warrant the statement that some cancers of this region have been permanently cured by radium alone. And as a relief measure in the late and hopeless stages of the disease, radium prolongs life, relieves pain and adds much to the comfort of the victim.
It has been amply demonstrated that radium treatment increases the permanency of the results obtained by surgery, and often converts inoperable into operable cases.
CHAPTER VI
EFFICIENCY OF RADIUM IN TREATMENT OF VARIOUS DISEASES
In 1923, Dr. R. E. Loucks, president of the American Radium Society, announced that toxic goiter had been cured by radium. Exophthalmic goiter has been, in most cases, successfully treated by irradiation. Just how the cure is effected is still unknown; for the thyroid body from animals exposed for many hours to the Gamma irradiations of radium bromide shows no perceptible histological changes. Yet far less radiation produces marked changes in the tadpoles derived from normal ova fertilized by spermatazoa which have been radiated in the frog, though no testicular changes can be detected with certainty (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 32, p. 224, 12th Ed.).
Among other diseases which have been more or less successfully treated by radium may be mentioned lupus vulgarus, epithelial tumors, syphilitic ulcers, chronic itching of the skin, papillomata (an epithelial tumor formed by hypertrophy of the papillae of the skin or mucuous membrane, as a corn or a wart), angiomata (tumor composed chiefly of dilated blood or lymph vessels), pigmentary naevi (blemish of the skin due to pigment, as a birth-mark), and pruritus (itching). Radium has been particularly effective in treating serious affections of the eyes, as was first fully demonstrated by Dr. Walter S. Franklin and Frederick C. Cordes, of San Francisco.
The most brilliant successes of radium have been in those cases “where some serious complicating ailment, such as heart disease, tuberculosis, Bright’s disease, or an extreme anemia, contra-indicates anesthesia or any procedure which will tax the patient’s vital resources; radium steps in and does its work quietly, imperceptibly and, indeed, without the slightest risk to life.”
Dr. Howard A. Kelly, of Johns Hopkins University, has been very successful in curing swollen masses of glands on the sides of the neck, cancer of the thyroid and of the cervix, and sarcoma of the chest. Dr. E. S. Molyneaux of London, has cured obdurate cases of tubercular glands in the neck, a disease rather frequent among children. Thanks to the patient researches of Dr. John A. Marshall, associate professor of biochemistry and dental pathology at the University of California, it is now known that a radioactive liquid may be used for sterilizing infected tissue. Experiments employing the radioactive liquid in the treatment of root canals have been conducted at the George Williams Hooper Foundation for Medical Research and at the College of Dentistry of the University of California.