For Breakfast.—One or two cups of coffee or tea, without milk or sugar, but sweetened with a fraction of a grain of saccharin. Three ounces of toasted or ordinary white bread or six ounces of brown bread; enough butter may be used to make the bread palatable, not more than one ounce. Sliced raw tomatoes with vinegar, or cooked tomatoes without any sugar or fats. This diet may be varied by the use of salted or fresh fish, either at breakfast or dinner. This fish must not be rich like salmon or sword-fish, but rather like perch or other small fish.
Noon Meal—Dinner.—One soup plate of bouillon, consomme julienne, or other thin soup, or Mosqueras beef-jelly, followed by one piece of the white meat of any form of fowl or a small bird. Sometimes a small piece, the size of one's hand, of rare beef, or mutton but no fat, may be allowed, and this should be accompanied by string beans, celery (stewed or raw), spinach, kale, cabbage, beans, asparagus, beets and young onions. Following this, lettuce with vinegar and a little olive oil (to make a French dressing), a cup of black coffee or one of tea, and a little acid fruit, such as sour grapes, tamarinds and sour oranges, or lemons may be taken, and followed by a cigar, if the patient has such a habit.
Supper.—This should consist of one or two soft boiled eggs, which may be poached, but not fried, a few ounces of brown bread, some salad and fruit and perhaps a glass or two of light, dry (not sweet) wine, if the patient is accustomed to its use.
Before Going to Bed.—To avoid discomfort from a sensation of hunger during the night, the patient may take a meal of panada, or he may soak graham or bran crackers or biscuits in water and flavor the mess with salt and pepper. The reduction of the diet is generally best accomplished slowly and should be accompanied by measures devoted to the utilization of the fat present for the support of the body. Thus, the patient should not be too heavily clad, either day or night, should resort to exercise, daily becoming more severe, and should not drink freely of water, unless sweating is established sufficiently to prevent the accumulation of liquid in vessels and tissues. Baths of the proper kind, cold or Turkish, should be used, if the patient stands them well. The bowels should be kept active by laxative fruit or purges. Salts are useful if drinks are thrown off rapidly. If proper exercise is impossible the rest cure with massage, electricity, passive exertion and absolute skimmed milk diet may be resorted to, particularly in those persons known as "fat anemics," who have not enough red corpuscles in their blood to carry sufficient oxygen to the tissues to complete oxidation.
[332 MOTHERS' REMEDIES]
CANCER.—(In the following article on cancer we quote in part from material issued by the Public Health Department of the State of Michigan).
Cancer is curable if it be operated upon in its early stages.—If it be left to grow and develop, cancer is always fatal. It may be partially removed when in an advanced stage, and relief may be had for some time after operation; but beyond the early stage, cancer cannot at present be permanently removed, nor permanently cured. Permanent cure of a cancer is possible if the afflicted person obtains an early diagnosis and receives early attention from a skilled surgeon. The only permanent cure for cancer known at the present time is early surgical operation.
Have Operations Failed to Cure?—Very few persons die from operations performed by skilled surgeons for the removal of cancer. Where cancer operation is done by experienced surgeons the fatality in America for the past fourteen years is less than one case out of a hundred, or in other words ninety-nine persons out of a hundred survive operation for cancer. Many persons have died from the return of the cancerous growth even after operation by a skilled surgeon, and this fact has led many persons to believe that operation for cancer is, therefore, unsuccessful, that it does not cure. This is not the fact. It is true that cancer often returns after operation, and that this method does not always effect a permanent cure; but it is not true that operations are, therefore, useless. The reason that operations do not remove cancers permanently in a great number of cases is that such cases do not submit to operation soon enough. The majority of persons suffering from cancer seek surgical aid too late. If a house is on fire and one refuses to turn in an alarm until the fire has spread from cellar to garret, neither blame nor disparagement must be placed upon the fire department if it failed to save the burning house. So with cancer; if the public refuses or neglects to operate for cancer at the time when it can be eradicated, the public cannot censure or belittle surgery. A cancer is like a green and ripe thistle. Pull up the green thistle and you have gotten rid of it. But if you wait until the thistle is ripe, and the winds have blown away the seeds, there is no use of pulling up that thistle. Early operations are successful. Late ones are not.
No reliable surgeon claims to save his patient or cure him of cancer if the disease be in an advanced stage. But experienced surgeons do recognize the fact that cancer in its early stage can be permanently removed and a permanent cure can be effected by surgical operation. No other means of permanent cure are known.