Cancer ' Cures.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 8, 19 February 1903, Page 2

Cancer ' Cures.'

Cancer has been the subject of endless quackery and empiricism. As we write, two ' cancer-curers ' are very much in public evidence in Australia — the one in Melbourne, the other in Queensland. Both are, as usual, irregular or non-diploma'd practitioners, and the only difference between them is this, that the man in the northern State has achieved the customary quack's torture plaster of raging corrosives, and submits patients — it is claimed with conspicuous success — to treatment with molasses. But one must receive tales of cancer-cures, not with the customary grain, but with a bushel, of salt. Most of us remember the vivid flash of hopeful interest that was excited by Count Mattei's ' electro-homoeopathic ' treatment of the disease. There was a rush for the tiny ' globules ' and colored • electricities/ and the knowing Count raked in the shekels at a wondrous rale, and built him a lordly castle on a crag somewhere among the Appenines. Then the remedy was tried in the balance and found wanting, and the Mattei boom collapsed like a torn balloon.

One day — it was somewhere in the middle of the eighteenth century — the notorious quack, Rock, was sitting- sipping strong waters in a coffee-house on Ludgate Hill, London. A gentleman, who did not know the varlet, was converging with him and expressed surprise that a <ertain highly-skilled physician had scarcely a patient, while a fellow like Rock was amassjng wealth at a merry rate. *Oh ! ' said the quack, ' I am Rock, and I shall s»on explain the matter to you. How many wise men, think you, are in the multitude that pass along this street?' 'About one in twenty,' replied the other. 'Well, then,' said Rock, 'the nineteen come to me when they are sick, and the physician is welcome to the twentieth.' The same remark is in a great measure true in our own time ; for, if it is the era of surgery's highest triumphs, it is also the golden age of the quack and the charlatan. Cancer patients, or persons suspecting the presence of cancer in their systems, are, of all others, the most easily captivated by the dead-sure jawbone or the roseate and wheedling promises of the cancer-curing quack. There is, perhaps, no disease so difficult to diagnose, even with the inevitable aid of the microscope, as cancer. But your quack is never ' baffled ' — this is his boast : he sets down every abnormal growth as cancerous, and forthwith submits his luckless victim to the torturing surgery of the period of the old red sandstone.

The process is thus described fey a Melbourne doctor in a recent issue of the Argus : ' The affected part is ringed round with a powerful escharotic [caustic], there is a slough of the adjacent tissues, and the whole part is taken away. But this is just what is done in surgery, except that the part is taken away without pain to the subject, and in a scientific manner. The surgeon knows what he is doing, what he should leave alone, and what he may remove; the quack can but hope that he may go far enough, without going too far, and even if his treatment turns cut as well as he could hope, his patient is left with a gaping sore, the dangers of which he has not knowledge enough to appreciate.' In the course of another interview upon the subj' ct, another Melbourne man gi<ve the following bit of common-sense advice which is of practical interest to people in every part of New Zealand. 'It is a widespread error,' said

SSniJ ICer1 Cer ! " *} 1 lts s f a B es ls a P a nful disease, and, as a result, any abnormal growth is not treated seriously until it becomes painful. Surgery, so far, is the only remedy, and the effectiveness of surgery depends on the case being taken early. 2 ? a, At C * rOWih - , has 8* Painful, the cancer may have advanced far on its awtul course, and the surgeon meet it at a disadvantage. The moral, therefore, is: DoSt put off until the last moment consultation with a medical man in anydoubtiul case.