WITH ALL RESERVE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 147, 23 June 1924, Page 6

WITH ALL RESERVE

Many of the statements attributed to eminent medical specialists and published broadcast should be taken with all reserve. Only a few days ago, when referring in this column to an announcement from Canada that the "cause" of cancer had at last been discovered and a new course of treatment of the disease had given remarkable results, we expressed the hope that "in the meantime sufferers and those who suffer in sympathy with them should not allow themselves to be carried away by the latest announcement" or anything of its kind until unshakable proof of .its efficacy after exhaustive tests had been established. To-day it is cabled, also from Canada, that Dr. John Parkinson, a London specialist in diseases of the heart, had something to say on smoking as it ii-ffccts'that, organ; also thai, the luuiu caubcs of heart disease uro

rheumatic fever and syphilis, and that many cases of so-called heart disease were really nervous symptoms. Further, the Canadian Medical Association, whom Dr. Parkinson addressed on the heart, discounted the theory of the cause of i cancer upon which our comments above referred to were based. The lay Press, like the lay public, is unqualified to take part or sides in any discussion of the technical aspects of disease and its treatment. But it is to be regretted that more care is not taken by eminent medical specialists in uttering statements which they know are likely t:. gain wide,currency through the lay Press. The results so often are that hopes of sufferers and their friends are raised to a great height on one seemingly positive unqualified statement, only to be dashed to pieces by another equally eminent medical opinion just as positive, just as unqualified. The publication of the Glover discoveiy of the cause of cancer, no less than the statements on heart disease attributed to Dr. Parkinson, are properly regarded and treated as news, and therefore given circulation. All that the lay Press can do in circumstances of this kind is to advise sufferers to bear their affliction as patiently.as they can, permitting themselves to be neither over-elated or utterly cast down by premature announcements of cause or cure of their particular disease. Medical fashions, they should remember, change with astonishing frequency, and the infallible cure to-day may be regarded as useless, even mischievous, to-morrow.