“That wasn’t cancer; it was lupus,” replied Dr. Strong; “a wholly different thing. True cancer of the face in its commonest location, the lips, is the most frequently cured of any form, but only by operation. Now here’s an interesting and suggestive point; taking lip-cancer patients as they come to us, we get perhaps sixty-five per cent of complete cures. With cancer of the womb, we get in all not more than forty per cent of recoveries. Perhaps some of you will be able to suggest the explanation for this contrast.”
“Because cancer of the lip isn’t as deadly a disease,” ventured some one.
“Cancer is cancer, wherever it is located. Unless it is removed it is always and equally deadly.”
“Then it is because the internal operation is so much more dangerous,” offered another member.
“No; uterine operations are easy and simple. It is simply because the sore on the face is obvious, plain, unmistakable evidence of something wrong; and the patient ordinarily gets into the surgeon’s hands early; that is, before the roots of the growth have spread and involved life itself. The difference in mortality between carcinoma of the lip and carcinoma of the womb is the difference between early operation and delayed operation. If uterine cancer or breast cancer were discovered as early as lip cancer, we’d save practically as many of the internal as we do of the external cases. And if all the lip cancer cases were noticed at the first development, we’d save ninety-five per cent of them.”
“Isn’t it the business of the physician to find out about the internal forms?” asked Mrs. Sharpless.
“Often the physician hasn’t the chance. The woman ought to do the first diagnosing herself. That is, she must be taught to recognize suspicious symptoms. In Germany there has been a campaign of education among women on cancer of the womb. The result is that more than twice as many Germans come to the operating table, in time to give a fair chance of permanent recovery in this class of cases, as do Americans.”
“How is the American woman, who knows nothing about such matters, to find out?” queried the minister’s wife.
“There is a campaign of education now under way here. Publications giving the basic facts about cancer, its prevention and cure, in simple and popular form, can be had from the American Society for the Control of Cancer,—Thomas M. Debevoise, secretary, 62 Cedar Street, New York City; or more detailed advice can be had from the Cancer Campaign Committee of the Congress of Surgeons of North America, Dr. Thomas S. Cullen, chairman, 3 West Preston Street, Baltimore; or from Dr. F. R. Green, 535 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, secretary of the Council of Health and Public Instruction of the American Medical Association.”
“Why not more easily and readily one’s own physician?” asked Mrs. Clyde.