IS CANCER INFECTIOUS?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12445, 30 August 1902, Page 8

IS CANCER INFECTIOUS?

TO THE SDITOB. Sib,—ln your answer to " Oceanic" in your issue of August 19, 1902, on tho.question, Is cancer infectious? you state emphatically it is not. May I ask you. for your authority, and tLe following'will give you my authority for calling it in question, which you kindly published some years back, but which I consider of sufficient import-, ance for the benefit of the general' publio to re-publish. I beg also to be allowed to express an opinion, after studying, the question for many years, that although contagious and, according to the learning and skill of the medical gentlemen in our midst, as weil as elsewhere, I believe it is curable, as well as nearly all other supposed incurable maladies'mankind is subject to. The above agrees with what you published in your paper, Deoember 28, 1901, r«." Violet cure for cancer," page 2, which perhaps you may deem worth reproducing also; but if so, please add cinnamon or capsicum or both .thereto, which will add to its curative virtues. The following is: extraoted from the Western Morning News, Plymouth! November 26, 1887:-"There is little doubt uow that cancer is contagious.. Dr R. Budd, of Barnstaple, gives three examples from liis own experience, which go very .far to prove the case. His first case is that of a gentleman who spent many years in India. He had cancer of the lip, and refused to submit to any operation. "When he was confined to his bed a favourite little terrier was scarcely ever out of his room, and,! as is the habit of such little dogs, frequently licked his master's lips. This dog died before his master of cauccr of the. tongue." In,the socoud case, "a lady suffering from cancer of the uterus .md vagina was nursed by a strong, healthy, young woman of 19 years of age. She, in spite of my remonstrances, persisted in washing itlie • rags which were saturated with the discharges' from her mistress's wounds. Six months after the death of the lady this young woman was admitted into the. North Devon Infirmary with a, large mass of canoer in the axilla, and speedily died of the disease." But the third fact which is cited by Dr Budd is even more conclusive, as, since he has been in practice in Batastaple,' five surgeons have died of cancer. All of them ofheinted at tho North Devon Infirmary. Such a mortality quoted, says Dr Budd, can hardly be conceived except on the supposition- that tho disease was domiminioated at least to some of them during their manipulations ou patients suffering from cancer. /.The establishment of the contagious character of cancer should prove a warning to all medical men, and speedily cause the adoption of careful precaution."— I am, etc., Duncdin, August 22. George Watson