HEALTH NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3830, 9 August 1927, Page 7

HEALTH NOTES.

CANCER.

early signs—early treatment

Contributed by the Department of Health.

Cancer is one of the most formidable disease.! of present-day civilised communities. Although the large majority of people go through life, even to old age, without suffering from cancer, the risk of being attacked with this disease is one which is widely disseminated.

When Sir Berkeley Moynihan, president ©f the Royal College of Surgeons, started the Yorkshire cancer campaign, he was told he would frighten people to death. His reply was that he would frighten them to life. What was to be dreaded, he said, was ignorance about cancer, not kncwledge, and so far they were abundantly justified in the campaign. therefore, it is very important that peapie should know the early signs of cancer, or, better still, the condition waich may give rise to the disease, so that they may secure treatment while cure still within their reach. The following are some of the truths which the eminent authority referred tc considers it is important for the public to know :—

1. Car.cor is always at first a local disease, spreading by direct extension from the spet first affected. It is often supposed that cancer is a “blood disease”— that tie blood is contaminated and that the local evidence of this is the nodule or the ulcer recognised as cancerous. All knowledge we possess refutes this view. 2. Cancer chooses to attack a diseased rather than a healthy organ. This involves the necessity for u s all to pay attention to health and to do all we-can to keep fit. 3. The occurrence of cancer is influenced by antecedent conditions. Chronic irritation is a definite precursor of cancer, as is seen especially upon exposed surfaces. 4. The occurrence of cancer, so far as wo know, is uninfluenced by certain factors sometimes regarded as “causes”: — (a> There does not appear to be any hereditary predisposition to cancer. The fact that one person in seven over the «i.'e of 30 dies from cancer implies that v ithin the limits of slight variation from this normal the incidence in any family may appear to be unduly heavy. Probably few families of ordinary size escape cancer in three consecutive generations Tne work of Miss Maud Slye upon mice appears to show that a tendency to the development of cancer can be engendered by special breeding, but no similar liability can be recognised in man. (b) Cancer, so far as w e know, is not caused by any special food or foods, nor by any absence of special foods. It is true that excessive indulgence in food when little or no exercise is taken will steadily and insidiously depreciate the general health, and that in such circumstances of lessened resistance a person may more easily fall a victim to cancer than to other diseases. Various articles of diet have been impugned—tomatoes. fresh meat, salt, and many other—but there is no evidence that would satisfy a scientific mind that these or any other articles of diet, in excess or in abstinence, play anv smcific part in causing this disease. So far as we know, no change in the natural history of a malignant growth has ever been observed by competent authorities to result from such dietetic control in an indisputable case of carcinoma, (c) There is at present no sufficient proof that cancer-houses or cancer districts exist, though further inquiry’ may well be conducted to resolve this question 5. The disease is neither infectious nor contagions.

G. In the early stages cancer rarely causes pain. In tumours of the breast, for instance, no pain, as a rule, is c wi until the skin is involved ; the lump is discovered by accident, and little regard is paid to it because it causes no inconvenience or discomfort. The truth that in women over 35 years of age a lump in the breast is malignant in three cases out of four needs all the repetition and emphasis that can be given to it. The silence of some forms of growth in the stomach and the rectum is notorious, and in the alimentary canal it is often obstruction rather than discomfort that first attracts attention. In cases of cancer, ill-health, anaemia, lassitude, distaste for food, aud

loss of weight are often regarded as the symptoms without which a diagnosis may hardly be made, but the existence of carcinoma is compatible with perfect health, and there may even be a gain in weght and a remarkable feeling of vir'tir and strength. 7. While the disease is local and when the growth is accessible cancer is curable. While the disease is local the complete eradication of not only the part immediately involved, but of all the adjacent parts which are most likely to be first implicated in its extension would also cure the disease. In a large number of cases, however, the growth., are not accessible or lend themselves only to the most dangerous and least successful forms of surgical attack.

The prevention and cure of cancer, then, call for the closest co-cperatic between the patient and the medical practitioner. First, the onset of cancer can be prevented in many cases by the elimination of any causes of chronic irritation. Rough stumps of teeth should be removed aud ill-fitting dentures should be replaced. If pipe-smoking is round to produce soreness on the same spot of lip or tongue it should be abandoned. Clothing which causes irritation of any particular region of the body—i.e., the breast should be altered. Advice and treatment should be sought in disorders of stomach, bowels, or womb. Secondly, if any of the conditions quoted above are present, medical advice should be immediately sought. In many cases the condition will be found to be not of a serious nature. Where it is due tc eaorcr, however. the patient will have the t-:fit of early surgical treatment. T "ft are are many cases alive and well to day in which cancerous growths have been removed in early stages once and for all.