| Age. | 10-20. | 20-30. | 30-40. | 40-50. | 50-60. | 60-70. | 70-80. | 80-90. | 90-100. | Over 100. |
| Number of cases. | 2 | 55 | 271 | 499 | 620 | 428 | 140 | 20 | 2 | 1 |
| Per cent. | 0.1 | 2.7 | 13.3 | 24.5 | 30.4 | 21 | 6.85 | 1 | 0.1 | 0.05 |
From this analysis we may conclude that three-fourths of all gastric cancers occur between forty and seventy years of age. The absolutely largest number is found between fifty and sixty years, but, taking into consideration the number of those living, the liability to gastric cancer is as great between sixty and seventy years of age. Nevertheless, the number of cases between thirty and forty years is considerable, and the occurrence of gastric cancer even between twenty and thirty is not so exceptional as is often represented, and is by no means to be ignored. The liability to gastric cancer seems to lessen after seventy years of age, but here the number of cases and the number of those living are so small that it is hazardous to draw positive conclusions.
17 The sources of the statistics for age are—Dittrich (160), Prager Vierteljahrschr., vol. xvii.; D'Espine (117), loc. cit.; Virchow (63), Virchow's Archiv, Bd. 27, p. 429; Leudet (69), loc. cit.; Lange (147), op. cit.; Katzenellenbogen (60), op. cit.; Gussenbauer and Von Winiwarter (493 cases up to 1855), loc. cit.; Lebert (314), op. cit.; Habershon (76), op. cit.; Gurlt (455), loc. cit.; Trans. N.Y. Path. Soc., vol. i. (41); and Trans. London Path. Soc., vols. i.-xxxiv. (43). The results correspond closely to those of the smaller statistics of Brinton and of Lebert.
Cancer of the stomach in childhood is among the rarest of diseases. Steiner and Neureutter18 failed to find a single gastric cancer in 2000 autopsies on children. Cullingworth19 has reported with microscopical examination a case of cylindrical-celled epithelioma in a male infant dying at the age of five weeks; it is probable that the tumor was congenital. It is not certain whether Wilkinson's20 often-quoted case of congenital scirrhus of the pylorus in an infant five weeks old was a cancer or an instance of simple hypertrophy. Kaulich21 cites a case of colloid cancer affecting the stomach, together with nearly all the abdominal organs, in a child a year and a half old, but whether the growth in the stomach was primary or secondary is not mentioned. The case which Widerhofer22 has reported as one of cancer of the stomach secondary to cancer of the retro-peritoneal glands in an infant sixteen days old seems from the description to be sarcoma. Scheffer23 has reported a case of large ulcerated encephaloid cancer of the fundus, involving the spleen, in a boy fourteen years old. Jackson24 has reported an interesting case of encephaloid cancer in a boy fifteen years old in whom no evidence of disease existed up to ten weeks before death. These cases, which are all that I have been able to find in children, are to be regarded as pathological curiosities.25
18 Prager Vierteljahrschr., vol. lxxxix. p. 77.
19 British Med. Journ., Aug. 25, 1877, p. 253.
20 London and Edinburgh Month. Journ. of Med., 1841, vol. i. p. 23.
21 Prager med. Wochenschr., 1864, No. 34.
22 Jahrb. f. Kinderheilk. Alt. Reihe, Bd. ii. Heft 4, p. 194.
23 Jahrb. f. Kinderheilk., xv. p. 425, 1880.