WHILE Scrofula was styled by Shakespeare “the reproach of surgery” – malignant disease, as Cancer is fitly styled, is the reproach alike of Medical and Surgery in the present epoch.
Sir George Newman tells us that the number of cancer victims in this country tends to increase every year, and has done so for decades past, convincing evidence that measures for effectively controlling this malady have not increased pari passu with requirements. The mortality rate is heavier in urban than in rural life, and is highest among nationalities whose existence is constantly kept at high tension.
This taint is not bound up with modern civilization, for the earliest record of malignancy is to be found in the Papyrus Ebers, a carefully guarded roll in the custody of the Royal College of Physicians, and a characteristic description of cancer has been deciphered on a tile taken from Nineveh. Why have the resources alike of early and mediaeval times, as well as of modern research, left us in so deplorable a quandary?.
Evidently, to use Edith Cavells immortal phrase, the current measures of prevention and treatment for this malady “are not enough”. Some new conception-some more dynamic of control and cure must be introduced if civilization, as we know it, is to survive, and the cancer holocaust lessened. In recent time, a great surgeon of the day met with a disseminating carcinoma.
The sufferer had experienced three operations, followed by two radium treatments. Recurrence had shown itself in the scar. “I have shot my bolt,” said the surgical genius, “Can you do better?” Such is the quandary in which civilized life finds itself in this present year of grace. Have no medical geniuses “Scorned delights and lived laborious days”, no institutions of surpassing equipment and amplitude arisen to rid human existence of this incubus?
On the contrary, there is not a city of magnitude in the civilized world that does not possess gifted men and great institutions specializing in the noblest work of the time, the deliverance of humanity from this blast of disease and death.
Medical philanthropists, like Sir Otto Beit and J.D. Rockfeller, have poured out millions to forward research and inspire investigation in the thick darkness of the cancer problem, but hitherto the issue has been that described by a brilliant French savant concerning a cognate problem, “Our mouth are full of promises but our hands are empty.” “Watchman, what of the night?”.
The fundamental ideas of modern cancer treatment are:
I. Malignancy is a double-sided unity: of a constitutional protective factor in defect and a local irritative factor in excess.
II. The organism normally possesses powers which make for the rectification of this imbalance.
III. The cure of cancer consists in the effective activation of the protective mechanism which obviates recurrence and brings about absorption of excess tissue.
IV. There exists always in each cancer history a pre-cancerous stage, often without demonstrable data.
V. Rectifications may occur spontaneously in cancer histories, but they are usually engendered by specific treatment.
VI. Let it be clearly understood that in each and every case the treatment of cancer makes the highest demands on the experience, judgment and skill of the physician or surgeon, that there is no problem in disease so difficult to finally solve, and that in every suspected case the counsel of the wisest professional man or woman be immediately obtained.
THE VALUE OF SURGERY IN CANCER.
Surgery has a great and enduring place in the treatment of cancer. It has the warrant and experience of hundreds of years behind it. It has in numberless cases proved of priceless and permanent utility in and by itself in arresting the progress, and removing the cause, of malignant growths, but the continued advance of the organism in health and strength after the removal of the cancerous growth is often limited. It is precisely in the re-creation of complete health after operation where surgery is frequently in defect. Cancer treatment by medicine strives to create this necessary activation.
Quite recently one of the surgically great, wise and eminent was enquired of: “Do you regard the knife as being the final arbitrament-for all time-of the cure of cancer?” “Indeed, I do not,” responded the surgical genius. “And what otherwise?” pursued the querist. “In fifty years time, ” said the authority, “We shall know much better how to concentrate the natural powers of each organism against its cancerous growth.”
There spoke the true cancer healer. The highest aim of treatment – surgical or other-in malignant disease is to activate the natural powers of resistance resident in each individual organism against the invader. How this can be done will be shown in the concluding article.
THE PLAN of CANCER TREATMENT IN GENERAL.
There are three salient angles in the general plan of cancer treatment :.
I. Prevention. II. Cure. III. Relief.
I. PREVENTION.
Each case of cancer, without exception, does not “just happen”. It is the definite product of definite causes, such as germ infection, or prolonged irritation, or neglected ulceration, etc. Often there are no definite signs to indicate the impending disaster.
This passive antecedence is styled the “pre-cancerous stage.” This stage is the time for preventive cancer treatment. Thus Mr. Sampson Handley states that malignant change rarely, or never, occurs in the mouth unless local germ infection has preceded.
Cancer treatment of the preventive kind is no figment of the imagination. Various trivial happenings in a family stock prone to malignant growths may well be regarded as danger signals. Thus a blow received by a breast already the victim of chronic mastitis, or a persistent apparently innocent lump in a breast whose fellow has already been removed,or persistent pain in a scar following operation for cancer all these may be considered as “anticipations of events about to occur”, and Arnica or Conium should be appropriately prescribed with hope of success, though demonstrable signs of malignancy may be wanting. Enlargement of the gall bladder where pain and jaundice are present without definite cancer symptoms may yield to remedies of the Berberis or Chelidonium type, prescribed as preventives.
II. CANCER CURES BY MEDICINE.
The question will be asked: “Can cancer be cured by medication ?” Here are a few instances showing that this can be done.
A gentleman, aged 35, was found to have a solid growth in the region of the lower ribs on the right side. X-ray examination, with a review of the previous history and present conditions, indicated that this was a new growth. It was firmly fixed, quite inoperable, and it was diagnosed as a cancer of the duodenum. He came to London, where, after renewed examination by experts, the diagnosis was verified, and the dictum of inoperability was repeated.
At this juncture he was advised to commence a course of cancer treatment on homoeopathic lines. He had lost 12 stones in twelve months. Treatment was continued without break for eighteen months. At the end of that time all traces of the growth had disappeared. The general health had fully returned. Four years after this the bodily well-being was still maintained, and not a vestige of the tumour was to be found.
Here is another instance of treatment by medicinal measures only:.
A married lady, aged 37, having had three children, presented herself in a state of acute mental distress due to the presence of a tumour in the left breast, and about the size of a hens egg. She had been sent to town by her physician for operation. She was to consult one of the great surgeons of the day. The diagnosis was verified by him, and the necessity for immediate operation insisted on.
She, however, forthwith placed herself under homoeopathic treatment which was continued for a twelve month without a break. A the end of three months not merely was the tumour definitely lessened in bulk, but her sense of general well-being was so heightened as to suggest to her the possibility of lessening some of the restrictions in daily life which had been imposed upon her.
No change in daily being and doing was allowed. Six months after commencement of treatment the tumour had further diminished, and a year from the beginning the patient was taken to one of the leading radiologists of the day, who was informed as to the malady and treatment and asked to discover which breast had been affected. After lengthy and elaborate radiological search he looked up in despair. “I cannot,” said be,” “tell which side has been the seat of the new growth. I have never seen a case like this before”. After two further years there is still no indication whatever of any return of the disease.
By far the most promising when systematically applied of the influences tending to the control of cancer are those due to the balanced activities of the alimentary system. The data for such conclusions are in the main empirical, but of such cogency as to justify, and even demand, those dietetic controls whose utility has been verified many times by practical experience.
