WAS IT CANCER?

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 6, 8 January 1930, Page 11

WAS IT CANCER?

ME. WHITE'S "CURE"

OFFICIAL MEDICAL REPORT

A report has been prepared by tho Deputy Director-General of Health (Dr. M. H. Watt) and submitted to tho Minister of Health (the Hon. A. J. Stallworthy) in regard'to the alleged "kerosene cure" for cancer of Mr. L. N. White.

Dr. Watt states that the facts appeal1 to bo that in 1927, when Mr. Whito visited the Auckland Hospital, ho had .an enlargement of the right seminal vesicle and prostate. This was regarded by tho medical attendant as a sarcomatous recurrence, for which radium treatment was ordered. The effect of the treatment was' most favourable, and when the patient last attended at the hospital there was no evidence of any trouble in the previously-affected region or in the. rectum. It is impossible to say, the doctor states, whether the enlargement of the seminal vesicle and prostate which was found to bo present was sarcomatous or not. If sarcomato'us, there is reason to believe that the present satisfactory condition of Mr. White is due to the use of radium, as at the time of his final discharge from hospital the enlargement had cleared up, and there was no evidence of any diseased condition in either prostate or rectum. WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS, j "Mr. White claims that ho cured himself by the use of applications of hot kerosene per rectum,"- Dr. Watt continues; "The availaWs evidence shows rather that all evidences of tumour and disease had disappeared under the'use of radium and before he loft tho hospital, and actually before ever the. kerosene was applied. Furthermore, the kerosene was applied to tho rectum, which, if the evidence of the hospital authorities can be relied upon, was at-, no time affected, and from which absorption of kerosene would not occur.

"It is difficult, then, to see how kerosene applied in this way would have any influence on a tumour in the neighbouring organ, the prostate. It is more reasonable to conclude that the tumour of the prostate either was an inflammatory process which naturally subsided, or, if sarcomatous, that it was removed by tho application of radium."