NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23863, 14 January 1941, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SOLDIERS' WAR AIMS With regard to the question of war aims, did anyone really think that war was going to solve all problems? asked Lieutenant Randolph Churchill, son of the British Prime Minister, in his maiden speech to the Commons. Britain went into this war very reluctantly as *i last resort. I he idea that at the end of it one had only to wave a wand and all problems would disappear was not true. In the Army barracks one did not, hear much argument about war aims. The men there knew they were fighting for their homes, their lives, for freedom, and the right to determine their own future. TREATMENT OF CANCER "Pride and Prejudice in the Treatment of Cancer" was the subject taken for the Bradshaw Lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons by Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson, surgeon To Queen .Mary. The present position, said Sir Alfred, was that in practically every part of the body, except the stomach and intestines, the treatment, of cancer had become a radio-surgical problem. By specialisation the knowledge of what radium and X-ray treatment would do had steadily increased. There were grounds lor believing that the incidence of cancer might be governed by an inherent susceptibility or lack of resistance and possibly also by a -virus. General environmental factors, such as occupation or social conditions, might play some part in the causation and 1 here was ample evidence that totally extraneous influences were often local essential causes. The master key to success iii the treatment of cancer was catlv diagnosis. Patients must be brought to realise that cancer is curable and thus led to seek advice without delay. The next important step to early diagnosis was skill in clinical investigation, and great advances had been made in methods of examination which could help toward this end. GIFTS FROM SCIENCE "The ideal man is the complete man," said Viscount Samuel in an address to industrial chemists, "if he is to have knowledge, family associations and j friendship, opportunity for thought and for action, freedom, he needs first the physical basis for these. He needs a home, nutriment, health, a secure livelihood, access to learning, a right environment; yes, and in these times of lawless violence lie needs as well the means to defend that way of life. All these are in the sphere of things. The material is the necessary basis for the immaterial; secondary it may be, but certainly indispensable. So we reach the conviction that applied science is worth while; not only for what its achievements are in themselves, but for the sake of the ends that they make possible. This will stand out very plain if we imagine for a moment modern physical science wiped out and try to measure the loss. Medicine, preventive and curative, is part of applied science. All the diseases that have been struck out of the catalogue of human | ills would return again; surgery would be crude and agonising; where one infant dies to-day, throe would die; the average span of life would be greatly shortened. Scientific agriculture is part of it: the abundance everywhere that is now within our grasp would fade away; scarcity and famine would bring back penury and death."-