CANCER CURES ON INCREASE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 3, 4 January 1941, Page 1 (Supplement)

CANCER CURES ON INCREASE

•"THE American College of 1 Surgeons meeting in Chicago recently announced 36,078 five-year cancer cures in the United States. These are persons who had cancer and who, five years after treatment, are free of the disease. The figure is an increase of 6000 over the number of five-year cures three years ago when the college took its last formal cancer census. The figures were issued as evidence not only that cancer is curable, but that the number of cures is rising notably. The first census, taken in 1931, showed only about 20,000 fiveyear cures. The census was issued on the eve of the surgeons' annual fiveday meeting in Chicago. The college also announced approval of 345 institutions in the United States and

Canada as cancer clinics. In proportion to population New Hampshire stands first in the United States in number of these approved cancer clinics. It has one clinic each for 10,000 persons. Second comes all the rest of New England, and North Dakota, where there is one approved clinic for eacb 100,000 to 200,000 persons. Seven States, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota, have no approved clinics. Officers of the college pointed out that lack of an approved clinic does not mean there is no satisfactory cancer treatment. Individual cancer specialists, it was explained, do good work in many cases where they do not have the added advantages of group clinics. Approval by the college means that each clinic has a group of specialists in six medical fields, all of which directly concern cancer, and that these six consult on each cancer patient.

The college announced also that it has approved 2806 hospitals in the United States, Canada' and a few foreign countries. Approval of a hospital means passing tests as to standards of equipment, safely, care of patients, organisation, governing boards, personnel facilities for treatment, accurate records, regular group conferences and a spirit. New Treatment of Wounds New ways to save the lives of soldiers and civilians with abdominal wo/unde were also reported. Abdominal wounds are the most fatal of all types. They have come to civilians on a large scale for the first time in war due to the splinters of air bombs, it was stated. The recent advances, which promise to save more of these wounded than ever before, were reported at a panel discussion whose speakers were Drs, Frederick A. Besley, Waukegan, Illinois; John H Mulholland, New York; Fred W Bailey, St Louis, and Ambrose Storck,*lNew Orleans. The surgeon's newest aid is "weighing" the blood of the wonnded. This is done by measuring the specific gravity and if the gravity drops it is a sign of internal bleeding, a nlghly important sign for the surgeon to know. The new technique, it is stated, is a better detector than pulse, blood pressure and blood counts, the older methods. The next new lifesaver is the use, near the front, of blood plasma to prevent the shock which kills many of the severely wounded. Plasma is blood with the red cells removed by whirling the mixture until the red part settles out. Most of the white cells go out also. But the watercoloured mixture remaining can be used in the same way as blood transfusions. The panel discussion held that plasma is not as valuable as blood, either from "banks" or transfusion, but that it is certainly better than the substitutes which war surgeons formerly had, namely, gin acacia and salt solutions. Rapid transportation is the third advantage and one far more certain for civilian wounded than for soldiers. Eight to 12 hours, the surgeons said, is about the limit an abdominal wound can go without surgical attention. After that death is almost certain. Mobile hospital units which can move up close to the front, and aeroplane ambulances wherever they can be used, promise large savins: of soldier lives. A new Iriad of nrtber that conducts electricity instead of insulating agate* it -wme shown as a likely mean*

of preventing explosions of anaesthetics during surgery. The rubber is real, acts and wears like normal rubber, but contains a compound which enables electricity to flow through it readily. Explosions of anaestbefle gases during surgery are uncommon, but feared because it has been difficult to prevent them completely and because they are likely to occur in a patient's lungs, with fatal results. Their cause is static electricity, tha kind that sparks off a person's fingers. The surgeons were shown hardened conducting rubber casters for operating tables and other surgical room rolling furniture. It was explained that the rclbber is designed for use not only for "feet" for the furniture, where static tends to build up but for surgeons and nurses' shoes, for the tubes which carry anaesthetic gases to the patient's mask and any place where it is desirable for safety's saka to draw off electricity. Australians' Discovery A discovery by three Australian researchers that the human nose secretes a substance which will make certain disease viruses harmless may open the way to effective medical control of influenza, stated Dr. W. H. Manwaring, of Stanford University, California. It seems that about a year ago F. M. Burnet, Dora Lush and A. V. Jackson, of Melbourne, found that a chemically purified secretion of the normal human nose inactivated every kind of influenza available there for testing. • The substance also demonstrated a limited ability to kill the viruses of parrot fever, infantile paralysis and a type found in a certain kind of tumour. The researchers concluded that the purified substance contained an enzyme which changed the chemical composition of the viruses and thus took, away their disease-producing powers. Dr. Manwaring, emeritus professor of bacteriology and experimental pathology, writing in the publication, "California and Western Medicine," reported attempts were under way to isolate the tiny enzyme from the substance and also to determine its effectiveness against influenza organisms in test groups of living creatures. The mouth and nose are considered by medical authorities to be the main entrances into the body for influenza virus. The nose is the body's airconditioning machine, but if it becomes inflamed and clogged, breathing through the mouth takes unconditioned and perhaps diseaee-ladea air into the windpipe and lungs. Research on influenza is held to be of special importance now because mescal authorities fear the possibility «f epidemics among men at im'liwy twining camps.