CANCER RESEARCH.
AN EXPERT'S OPINION.
(bpkcial to "thb rsxss.")
WELLINGTON, April 18
Dr. Hugh Campbell Boss, the wellknown cancer specialist, has come on a visit to Mew Zealand. Ho was director of the research section at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, and is a brother of Sir Ronald Ross, the eminent head of tho Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who has made a world-wide namo in connexion with the prevention of malaria by getting rid of the mosquito, especially in the Panama Canal zone
Dr. Hugh Ross landed at Pitcairn Island on tho voyage out, and examined DO per cent, of the islanders. From this examination, and from careful enquiries mado on the spot, ho says there can bo no doubt that cancer does not exist in the islaud, and never existed there. Since tho landing of tho Mutineers of tho Bounty in 1789, records have been kept, of all the deaths, which were mostly duo to old ago or accident. Not a single case of cancer, or even n suspicion of one, has boen heard of at Pitcairn. It was, ho said, also established that the Esquimaux were freo from cancer. Cancer, lie says, is not due to diet, and the fact that these two people, the Esquimaux and Pitcairnians, never get it, and have diametrically opposed types of food, proves that cancer cannot be climatic in origin. The observations also show that cancer is not hereditary. Both the Esquimaux and Pitcairnians are descended from cancerous stock. The former are descended from the Chinese. The latter are half English and half Talutian; yet neither gets cancer. There remains one explanationisolation. Both Esquimaux and Pitcairn Islanders always have b,een more or less isolated. They do not mix with others. In other words it means that cancer is an infective disease. It is, at least in part, caused by a germ or some agent derived from without tho body which has to be imported into a community before the can occur Dr. Ross therefore put m a plea for the notification of the disease, and its isolation where it is humanly possible. ____——
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17742, 19 April 1923, Page 8
Word Count
354CANCER RESEARCH. Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17742, 19 April 1923, Page 8
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