INCREASE OF CANCER.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XL, Issue 5805, 10 May 1912, Page 6

INCREASE OF CANCER.

THE fact that the death ra!.e in IWJ in Great Britain and Ireland was (he highest on record, showing an inciViiM' of as much as 29 per million living upon the rate in the previou- year, the highest recorded till then, has very naturally stimulated a corresponding increase in the interest with which th;probable causes, original or contributory, of this tell disease are dbi:iu-;.cd b.v medical men and the public generally. It is not only in the Old Country that cancer is on the increase. It is increasing in New Zealand and the Australian States to a most alarming extent. Specially is this increase noticeable in Western Australia, the death rate having risen from 0.33 per 1000 in 1881-5 to 1.09 in 1909. This steady increase in the number of deaths from cancer in these colonies is? referred to in a lengthy and mo t interesting article ty Dr. Alexander Haig, which appears in the National Review for January. Dr. Haig quotes a statement made by Dw. Hislop and Clennell Fen wick (in the British Medical Journal for 1909) that with an increasing consumption of meat and tea "rheumatism is universal and cancer tends constantly to appear at an earlier age." Dr. Haig uses his statement to fortify his general contention on which he has been harping for years that there is a strong casual relationship between rheumatism airl cancer, and that there is very good reason for believing that cancer is not so much due to various external irritants as to the.neglect of "that daily and hourly irritant which cjn be observed at work, in the production of gout and rheumatism, namely, euric acid or ::antbin, the waste products from unnatural foods." The moral of the article is that we should be much more moderate in our consumption of meat and tea., The doctor admits it is true that "cancer affects all vertebrate animal?, including the fish in the ocear," but: he argues that as it has been possible, for man, "shown by his teeth and structure to be a frugivorous animal, to adopt the diet of a carnivorous ani-. mal, it is equally possible for other; classes of the vertebrata to wander: from their natural foods." He certainy makes out a strong priina facie; case against immoderate u:?e of meat as a human food. Cancer, points out the doctor, "progresses more slowly as age advance?, and there is then a constantly diminishing supply of uric acid in the' body. Even if cancer should be proved to br> the work of a parasite we should btill, he says, have no difficulty in understanding why it should be rare among vegetarians, or why all the world over its incioence rises and fall with that of gout and rheumatism, for it fs just the waste products of gout and rheumatism that pave the way for these parasites. Granted that external irritants may play their cvii role, an internal irritant must manifestly increase the effects'of the external, and Dr. Haig therefore asks for a careful consideration of his plea that as it is certain that gout and rheumatism can be both cured and prevented by the removal of food poisons, the widespread parallelism of cancer with these troubles gives good ground for hope that diet will do as much for it, though it cannot be expected that cancer will be cured when far advanced or in less than time than is required to cure gout or rheumatism. That the great sum total of uric acid disease is increasing with the increased consumption of flesh and tea, there is fairly conclusive evidence.