“But stomach operations are terribly dangerous, aren’t they?” inquired a member.
“Not any more. They were once. The operation for gastric ulcer in the early stage is simple. Even developed cancer of the stomach can be cured by the knife in from twenty-five to thirty per cent of the cases. Without the knife, it is sure death. I’m glad we got to the stomach first, because that is the most obscure and least hopeful of the common locations of the growth. In carcinoma of the breast, the most prevalent form among women, there is one simple, inclusive rule of prevention and cure. Any lump in the breast should be regarded, as Blood-good of Johns Hopkins puts it, ‘as an acute disease.’ It should come out immediately. If such growths come at once to the surgeon, prevention and cure together would save probably ninety per cent of those who now die from this ‘creeping death,’ as our parents called it.
“Now, I’ll ask you to imagine for the moment that I am conducting a clinic, for I’m not going to mince words in speaking of cancer of the womb, the next commonest form. Any persistent irritation there is a peril. If there is a slight, steady, and untimely discharge, that’s a danger signal. The woman should at once have a microscopical examination made. This is simple, almost painless, and practically a sure determination of whether there is cancer or not. The thing to do is to find out.”
“But if it is cancer, is there any chance?” asked the lady of the hatpin.
“Would you regard tuberculosis as hopeless?”
“Of course not.”
“Your parents would have. But you have profited by popular education. If the public understood what to do in cancer as thoroughly as they know about tuberculosis, we’d save almost if not quite as many victims from the more terrible disease. Fatalism is as out of place in the one as in the other. The gist of the matter is taking the thing in time. Let me read you what the chairman of the Cancer Campaign Committee of the Congress of Surgeons of North America, Dr. Thomas S. Cullen, of Baltimore, says: ‘Surgeons are heartsick to see the many cancer patients begging for operations when the disease is so far advanced that nothing can be done. Cancer is in the beginning a local process and not a blood disease, and in its early stages can be completely removed. When the cancer is small the surgeon can, with one fourth the amount of labor, accomplish ten times the amount of good.’”
“Does that always mean the knife?” asked a timid-looking woman.
“Always. There is no other hope, once the malignant growth has begun. But the knife is not so terrible. In fact, in the early stages it is not terrible at all. Modern surgery has reduced pain to a minimum. The strongest argument against dread is a visit to a well-equipped surgical hospital, where one can see patients sitting up in bed and enjoying life a few days after a major operation. Even at the worst, the knife is less terrible than death, its certain alternative.”
“Why do you call it the certain alternative?” asked the minister’s wife. “I have seen facial cancer cured by concentrated ray treatment.”