“Ah, of the liver, I suppose,” commented the physician.
“Why on earth should you suppose that?” demanded Mrs. Sharpless suspiciously.
“Why, because cancer of the liver is the only form which could possibly be regarded as hopeless from the first.”
“All cancer, if it is really cancer, is hopeless,” declared the old lady with vigorous dogmatism. “Don’t tell me. I’ve seen too many cases die and too few get well.”
“Were those ‘few’ hopeless, too?” inquired Dr. Strong with bland slyness.
“I guess they weren’t cancer, at all,” retorted Mrs. Sharpless; “just doctors’ mistakes.”
“Doctors do make mistakes,” admitted the representative of the profession, “and cancer is one of the diseases where they are most commonly at fault. But the error isn’t of the kind that you suggest, Grandma Sharpless. Where they go wrong so often is in mistaking cancer for some less malignant trouble; not in mistaking the less malignant forms for cancer. And that wastes thousands of lives every year which might have been saved.”
“How could they have been saved?” asked the old lady combatively.
“Let me do the questioning for a minute, and perhaps we’ll get at that. Now, these many cases that you’ve known: were most of the fatal ones recent?”
“Not very,” she replied, after some consideration. “No; most of them were from ten years ago, back.”