Correspondence. CANCER AND ITS CURE.

Progress, Volume III, Issue 4, 1 February 1908, Page 130

Correspondence. CANCER AND ITS CURE.

On the above important subj ect, which has lately been the cause of much discussion in connection with a system of alleged cure practised by the well-known Dr. Beard, we have to thank Dr. G. Hamilton Rowlands for a letter, from which we take the following cogent extracts :—: — " The discovery of an actual cure for cancer would be the event of the century, and every medical journalj ournal would be full of it, and every medical man would be roused to extreme enthusiasm. Honours of every description would be heaped on the lucky discoverer, whoever he was and wherever he hailed from. There have been so many so-called " cures ;" the " three electricities " of that arch-quack Count Mattei, to the many instances where an honest and scientific man has been led by enthusiasm, by coincidences of the vis medicatrix natures, or by a combination of these causes into a genuine belief that he has solved the great problem. It should be needless to state the fact that any method that is backed by anything like sound evidence will be given a fair trial at one of the London hospitals. Even the Mattei treatment, though it carried no scientific weight, purely on account of the faith reposed in it by dupes of all classes, was given a trial, and it will be remembered that it was not until it was proved that the " three electricities " consisted solely of three bottles of coloured water that the faith of its devotees was shattered. Not, indeed, until the Count had amassed a large fortune. There are some, no doubt, who think there was something of genius in the very boldness and simplicity of the fraud ; genius, however, grossly misapplied in false pretence and robbery in victimising suffering humanity. " With regard to Dr. Beard's pancreatic treatment it is not suggested that Dr. Beard is a charlatan or that the advocates of his treatment are other than honestly convicted. They believe what we are all so anxious to believe, and in the heat of their enthusiasm cool, calm, scientific judgment melts away. " Is it to be imagined that the medical man, who of all people, except its actual victims, is most intimately acquainted with the ruthless, relentless and agonising ravages of the cancer scourge, who almost daily witnesses the pathetic, the heart-rending, the hopeless struggle, and has to stand by in painful impotence (his means of help being limited almost entirely to the morphia syringe), would not welcome from any source any remedy that would place in his hands a weapon to fight the most terrible evil that human flesh is heir to ? No sane person can calmly think such a thing of a profession that is devoted to the relief of suffering ; whose history contains many monuments of noble self-sacrifice in the cause of duty, whose ranks contain many, it may be obscure (they do not advertise), of the type that has been immortalised in the Dr. William Macl^ure, of lan Macl^aren. Nor is it possible that the medical profession would subscribe to and tolerate their leading journals if they showed illiberality of thought or unfairness in their views. " Unfortunately, Dr. Beard's pancreatic treatment, having been subj ected to a fair trial at the Middlesex hospital and by the workers of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, has proved a complete f?ilure. It is moribund. "