IMMUNITY FROM CANCER

Evening Star, Issue 22880, 11 February 1938, Page 7

IMMUNITY FROM CANCER

BUTCHERS HEVER ATTACKED According to a popular belief, butchers never have cancer, but until quit©'recently nobody has taken the trouble to verify the statement. It is wrong, however, to despise such popular sayings, as they sometimes have a basis of truth which may become a starting point for serious research. When it is a question of cancer, moreover, against which science is still so inadequately armed, it is one’s duty to investigate every suggested means of combating it. A celebrated physician, Dr Blier, therefore, having several tim.es heard this remark about butchers, instituted an extensive inquiry. His researches covered the following five groups:—

A—Meat butchers (beef, veal, mutton). B—Hippophagic butchers (dealing with the flesh of horses, donkeys, ! mules). • C—Makers of sausages (pork and beef). • D—Pork butchers. E—Tripe-sellers. For the first three groups Dr, Blier has recorded a formal confirmation of the absence of cancer. For Group D .the reports are to the effect that cancer is very rare among its members. In ,the remaining group, E, that of the tripe-sellers, cancer frequently manifests itself. “Is it possible,” Dr Blier asks himaelf, “to explain why those who handle raw muscular tissue should be Immune from cancer?’-* Back in 1907, at the Pasteur Institute, a certain Dr Bridre rendered a mouse impervious to the grafting of a .cancerous growth simply by inserting under its skin a fragment of spleen. From this experiment it was learned that the epidermis can permit the passage of elements of defence against bacteria and toxins. Now the hands of the manipulators of raw meat, being, as they are, constantly in contact witn flesh, fat, the, marrow of bones, and ligaments, are the seat of an undeniable biological reaction. “ Anybody who closely observes the hands of butchers,” says Dr Blier, “ will note the smooth surface, shining with grease, the thickness of the fingers, the total absence of the cutaneous furrows known as the lines of the hand. It takes about six months for » butcher’s hands to acquire this particular aspect and about six months after he has given up the work for it to disappear. Note that this special aspect of the hand is -found in the meat butcher, the sausage-maker and pork butcher, but not at all in the tripeseller. One sometimes sees tripesellers with hands like duchesses. That is because they do not handle fat or flesh. m “ In view, then, of the incontestable immunity of the meat butcher from cancer, 1 suggest the following explanation : the handler of raw meat absorbs through the surface of his hands certain biologic products that protect him from cancer exactly in the same way as the insertion of a piece of hdWthy spleen under the skin of a mouse rendered the latter for several months impervious to a cancerous graft." This elucidation fits in with another known fact: the absence of cancer among the Eskimos, whose skin is perpetually covered with animal fat. While realising that there may be objections to this (explanation, Dr Blier believes that the butcher is receiving constantly into his system, through the medium of his hands, one or more substances present in all non-cancerous organisms, but which are lacking in those attacked by the terrible scourge. These are the substances which control the multiplication of the cells of the body. Without this police service, cancer (which simply means cells growing out of control) would occur. Butchers by renewing constantly their stock of “ guardians of the cellular peace ” are thus always protected from the crises of anarchy which characterise cancer. _ If this is true, which is better—to have the hands of a butcher boy or to have one chance out of 11 of dying of cancer? It is worth while from now on experimenting seriously with a cancer prophylaxis based on the following system: Every night before going to sleep, rub the hands with a mixture of meat pulp and marrow of bones, and cover them with gloves until the morning.