WAR AGAINST DISEASE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 4 August 1925, Page 9

WAR AGAINST DISEASE.

SMALLPOX AND CANCER.

SCIENCE’S “WONDER WEEK.”

LONDON, July 19. Medical experts emphasise the fact that the past seven days have been a “wonder week” in medical research.

They believe that Dr. Mervyn Gordon, consulting bacteriologist to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, ' has discovered the bacillus of smallpox, thus enabling vaccine to be produced from the virus instead of calf lymph, and leading to more perfect methods of vaccination.

The utmost interest is being taken in Dr. William Gye’s success in making mice immune against cancer, a discovery which has revolutionised cancer research. Bacteriologists already are searching for a vaccine that will make human beings immune. The Sunday Herald predicts that within a year volunteers will be asked to submit to cancer vaccination. They will need to be very brave, because they will he martyrs if the earliest vaccines fail after inoculation with the living germ. Dr. Gye, who is a general bacteriologist, is resuming his investigation of dogs’ distemper, on which he was engaged at the instance of fox-hunting interests when he discovered the cancer germ. The fox-hunters who subscribed to the research objected to Dr. Gye breaking off the work. Dr. G. R. Murray, director of the Imperial cancer fund, who is associated with Dr. Gve’s investigations, has undertaken to continue the cancer research. “A most important statement regarding a. cure for cancer will be made in the autumn,” says Dr. J. G. Adami, vice-chancellor of the Liverpool University. “Dr. Wm. Blair Bell, professor of obsterics and gynaecology at Liverpool University, will then disclose the culmination of 15 years’ experiments, including four years’ tests of means of destroying cancer tissue in human beings', in which he achieved remarkable success. ’ ’

Dr. Adami adds: “It is not necessary to know the cause of a disease in order to find its cure. The general rule is the discovery of a cure before the cause is found.”