TREATMENT OF CANCER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14492, 5 October 1910, Page 7

TREATMENT OF CANCER.

USE OF THE KNIFE. By Telegraph.— Association.— Paris, October 3. At the International Cancer Conference, which has opened in Paris, Professor Delbet, in his paper, said that the disease was not incurable if early resort were made to surgery. He did not refer to any other treatment.

NOT DUE TO HEREDITY. Mr. Balfour, presiding at the annual meeting of the General Council of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, in July, warned the public not to expect the immediate discovery of some accurate and active remedy of the disease, and outlined the results already obtained. Proposing the thanks of the meeting to tho council and all who had assisted in the work, he said there were critics who had expected greater and more direct results from its work. Such expectations did not take sufficient account of the fact that such great problems could only be attacked by dealing with them as part of a great biological whole. All our discoveries were due to a broad scientific outlook, which had produced unexpected results and conclusions. For example, investigation of the action, of miscroscopic organisms had discovered .the same kind of common cause producing such utterly different things as alcohol, pearls, and whooping cough. One result of the investigations carried on under the fund had been to • show that bacteriology would give but little assistance in dealing with cancer. But some important conclusions had been reached. The staff had decided that heredity was almost negligible as a cause of cancer. Tho investigations went to show that there were causes which undoubtedly produced cancer in even the best-behaved tissues. This indicated that something could be done to prevent _ cancerous growth. It would bo a cruel kindness to suggest that they were even within sight of a remedy, but it was encouraging to find that the growth of implanted cancer could bo checked, and there could only be a difference of degree and not of kind between the original growth and the implanted growth. Only by scientific experiment on a broad basis could great and permanent results be produced under the fund.