At one period of their history radiologists who handled rays, died off like flies from skin cancers;and it is well known that these rays have produced the disease in patients under going treatment consists in bombarding the malignant cells with these destruction is occasionally successfully accomplished and a temporary halt is produced in the disease; at other times thought, not only the cancerous tissue is annihilated but also the defensive mechanism which Nature is building around it, and then the growth reappears with increased virulency.
In any case, it is obvious that the destruction of the tumour symptom of cancer cannot effect the carcinogenic tendency of the body which has all the time been engaged in building the tumour. Treatment by diathermy and electrical treatment are similarly irrational and futile.
The fact that the surgeons and radiologists in their periodic bouts of bouquet throwing amongst themselves, fan point to a small number of cases of cures subsequent to operations and ray treatment, is a standing monument to the strength and efficiency of the natural forces and the wille zu leben that is within all of us, even when we are so far gone as nourishing a cancer.
Suppose salvarsan was universally abandoned and surgery and radium were used to deal with the primary chancre in syphilis, there would be undoubtedly ten per cent. of cures subsequently certified despite the grotesque treatment. Those ten per cent. would represent the individuals whose constitution successfully resisted the secondary stage of the disease. In the same way cures of cancer which have occurred under orthodox treatment are probably largely natural cures where the malignancy of the tumour was of low power and the body rallied and restored its cancer inhibitory factor.
The prevention of cancer for each person is easy. As it is due to an altered chemical formula of the blood usually generated from constipation and faulty feeding, but so recondite in its nature as to defy analysis, its avoidance is certain if the body is drilled to perform regular bowel evacuations and the palate is trained to prefer natural foods to the highly flavoured and devitaminized articles. For the proof of this I would refer one to Ellis Barkers classical twin volumes on the subjects in which they are all marshalled. He has left future writers on the disease in a great difficulty, for if they are sincere, they can say nothing essentially new about it, and are left only do dot the “is and cross the “t”s of something he has already stated.
The general prevention of this scourge s going to be a very difficult matter. That the disease is on the increase is clear even in a comparatively cancer-sheltered country like the Irish Free State. It must be remembered too that the mortality tables are an inadequate measure of its frequency at any particular time; for those figures of its frequency at any particular time; for those figures only photograph its gross end effects and indicate ten cancer potentialities of conditions of life many years previously.
Cancer poison is a very slow poison, which rarely takes effect in less than ten years and usually waits until the middle of a persons life before striking: the person who is dying from it tonight received his initial impulse to malignancy over a decade ago. It is widely recognized that the number of factors which are influencing the degenerance of the race are increasing annually and are going to increase enormously if the present accepted views of what civilization means are to obtain-and I see no evidence that they are not.
Huge quantities of denaturalized and often chemicalized foodstuffs are appearing on all sides and displacing from the table the natural food products of field and garden. Tons of patent medicines, sedatives, stomachaches, vitamin and hormone concentrations, pills, ointments, etc., are sold yearly; and a disturbing fact about many of them is that they are quite effective and give the reliefs sought for by their purchasers. who will even think of looking after catarrh if some advertised unguent or vapour relieves all the unpleasant symptoms, or the stomach if its agonies are suppressed by drenching it with alkali?
Added to all this, the stress of life is increasing: the modern tendency is to cram more into twenty-four hours than has been hitherto thought possible. It will not be however, until another decade or more that the evil forces of to-day will have worked themselves out on their victims, and what the actual results will be in not pleasant to predict.
I am opinion that either of two things will happen: the pneumonias, influenza, diseases of the heart and arteries will leap forward in killing power and cancer will increase in a more or less orderly manner; or, if orthodox medical science can increase its technical efficiency and bring forward to its aid the products of chemistry and bacteriology and suppress by drug and serum many of the respiratory and gastro- intestinal affections by throwing their viruses back into the histological sphere, carcinoma, sarcoma, rodent ulcers and malignancy of every type will swiftly advance to incredible figures.
The only way this Gordian knot in which we appear to be entangled can be loosened is by drastic legislation to protect efficiently the peoples food supply and to put down every type of individual who is hawking unsanctioned curative products in the public press. There are laws in force to prevent the pollution of rivers and lakes by chemicals and poisonous waste products and I cannot see why similar enactments should not govern the nutrition and health of the nation.
Here I wish to point out that there are two products which have aroused suspicion for a long time in connection with cancer and physical degeneration in general: they are white bread and meat. Most people live mainly on bread and regard it, and rightly so, as “the staff of life”. When this bread is made from refined flour it is deprived of many of its most important mineral elements, vitamins, enzymes, etc. Dr. Harvey Kellogg one of the greatest dietetic authorities in the world in his book, The New Dietetics, makes the following statement: ”
Dogs fed exclusively on bread made from patent roller flour died on average at three weeks, whereas dogs fed exclusively on whole wheat flour were hearty and thriving at the end of thirty days.” Many people, however, with a varied diet escape wholly or partly form the deadly effects of this silent white menace, but a great number do not, and, unknown to themselves, suffer accordingly.
Meat products indulged in excessively are even more dangerous to health. There are very strong reasons to believe that most people consume much more protein in the shape of flesh meat than is usable by the body. When unusable it produces an excess of dangerous amino acids which are pernicious to the kidneys and other structures and its putrefactive residues in the lower bowel in constipated persons work deadly havoc throughout the entire system. Urgent official investigation on white bread and meat as possible factors to be considered in relation to cancer is needed.
THE Irish Free State medical authorities are in great hopes that the “cure” for cancer is not far distant and that with a bit of luck it might be discovered within this country. The Council of the Royal Irish Academy of Medicine and other bodies have drawn up elaborate schemes for laboratory work out of the proceeds of the Sweepstakes. They have asked for the sum L1,000,000 to establish an Institute of Clinical Research, out of which L10,000 is year marked for a years work on the cancer problem. In addition it is intended to establish a central depot of radiology for its treatment.
Nothing so far has yet been sanctioned, but it is likely that a considerable sum of money will soon be granted. The laboratories of the universities and hospitals are getting ready for a big onslaught on the disease, and the popular press which is periodically full of enthusiasm about the activities of individuals in other countries and the possibilities of some substance, will soon have an added thrill which comes from the sense of manly competition at home.
It is discharging to realize that the general opinion held even by men of education and intelligence is that some day something in a bottle or ampoule with an abstruse chemical formula will be handed out from a laboratory, which will cure cancer and that everyone will be happy ever after. I suppose that it is regarded as inconceivable that science which has given the world wireless and television can possibly fail to conquer it. That great numbers of substances reputed at one time or another to be cancer cures — cundurango, formic acid, trypsin, thyroid, potassium, lead, euglobulin, etc. –have proved failures is of no significance: the next one is sure to be better.
This idea is, of course, erroneous; it is based on the mistaken beliefs that medicine is allied to science, that is has advanced at all to any great extent or is capable of advancement with its present outlook, whatever funds are at its disposal, and also that disease processes are susceptible to cure by means other than the operation of the biological laws in which we have our existence. To show that this is so, it is necessary to digress and examine the position of modern medicine vis a vis the problem of disease.
