Africa, and other countries where the diet is composed mainly of fresh vegetables, fruits, and grains. Dr. McCarrison, the eminent experimental physiologist, has published several papers showing the protecting influence of vegetables against neoplastic formations which he ascribes to their vitamin content. This is not the place to go into statistical details although I have before me a pile of nearly 100 such investigations. The ultimate lesson we can learn from epidemiological, statistical, and laboratory studies is that if we wish to remain free from cancer we must return to a more primitive form of living; the first step being the adoption of a vegetarian diet. REAL CAMPAIGN FOR CANCER PREVENTION A real campaign for the control of cancer should, therefore, begin by cancer prevention. The people at large as well as the physicians must become acquainted with all the facts, only a very insignificant part of which were mentioned in this article. The slogan of "get operated on, radium, or x-ray," must be replaced by that of: "Live and eat according to nature's laws!" Such a slogan it is true will not improve the surgeon's clientele and might take a longer time to impress the people who have always resisted attempts for their real betterment. But like the measures of public hygiene, the anti-alcohol and pure food campaigns, it is bound to succeed and benefit all future gen erations. A cancer prevention campaign, like all other such activities under the present competitive system, requires financial backing. The American Association for the Prevention and Cure of Cancer is hampered in its work by the lack of funds. At their annual convention, at the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, Atlantic City, May 27, 1925, a resolution was adopted to make an appeal for funds to the general public, as most of the professional philanthropists were under the influence of the surgeons. Until now, the current expenses have been met by the generosity of Dr. L. Duncan Bulkley, the eminent dermatologist who has given up the largest practice of its kind in the United States to devote himself to the prevention and cure of cancer. It is Dr. Bulkley also who has paid the deficits of the quarterly journal "CANCER," devoted to the best interests of cancer patients. The journal which contains original articles, clinical reports and reviews of the world literature should be issued monthly instead of quarterly. The American Association for the Prevention and Cure of Cancer has established a free clinic where cancer patients or those belonging to susceptible families can get free information and advice, also a laboratory where continued experimentation could go on. This is known as the American Cancer Institute and is located at 1171-1175 Washington Avenue, New York City. An auxiliary society composed of laymen has been formed to raise funds for the above purposes and for the publication of pamphlets to be distributed to the people at large. If ever there was a worthy cause, absolutely dedicated to the welfare of the people, this certainly is one. It is now up to the people at large to support it generously. Cancer is the gravest, most urgent problem of modern medicine. This greatest of all plagues and the most pitiless of all maladies has hitherto remained rebellious because of the inadequate measures adopted for its conquest. It will remain forever our elusive and murderous foe if we merely try to cut it with the knife, or burn it with radium or the x-rays. The secret for its final eradication is simple, if we but heed nature's cue. Treat Cancer with Cold.-A new method of treating certain cases of strated for the first time before the French Dermatological Society. Charpy, the scientist and research worker, is the discoverer of the new treatment and he reports great success. He showed an apparatus for cauterizing cancers and other skin complaints resembling an ordinary laundry iron which, instead of being heated, is dipped in liquid air and brought to a temperature of 185 degrees below zero Centigrade. This process, according to Charpy, causes much less pain and provokes a less violent reaction than cauterization by heat. (N. Y. Times, May 22, 1926). A PRACTICAL QUARTERLY JOURNAL Under the Auspices of the American Association for the Prevention and Cure of Cancer All original matter must be addressed to the Editor and contributed exclusively to this Journal Address subscriptions and matter relating to advertising, reprints, etc., to 121 East 60th Street, New York City Copyright, 1926, by L. D. Bulkley Price, prepaid, $5.00 per volume, United States, Canada and Mexico; SURGEONS' VIEWS OF CANCER DR. WILLY MEYER, who is preeminently a surgeon, and an eminent one, has recently published in the Medical Journal and Record a series of articles, entitled "Some notes on Cancer," in which occur remarks which coincide so much with our own, and with those of other well-known surgeons, that it may be well to put the evidence of the many together to help in making the matter clear to the general medical profession; for Dr. Meyer is very near to joining the large number of physicians and surgeons who recognize the constitutional nature of cancer. The articles are full of quotations from German and other scientists, which we should like to repeat, did space permit, as also his lucid arguments which he gives, to support his rather novel contention, namely, that the spread of cancer cells in the tissues is due less to their power of extension than to a vis-a-tergo, whereby the constant growth of the growing cells in the primary focus, are forced forward into vacant spaces between those of adjoining regions. We will quote a section or two towards the beginning of his fifth study, Vol. 123, No. 9, Page 563. "Regarding the question of growth in cancer, the theses have been advanced in previous communications, that there seem to be good reason for believing "new growth" a passive phenomenon, due to enforced cell division, such as result presumably from the presence in a group or groups of cells of a chemically changed focus (or foci): and further good reason for believing the various types of new growth, from hyperplasic, through all the intermediate benign stages up to and including malignancy, to be reactions to and symptomatic of merely quantitive differences in the degree of concentration in the focus of the chemical substance which enforces cell subdivision. "By means of numerous quotations from the literature, we tried to establish in the third communication of this series the point that throughout this entire proliferative territory, from hyperplasia to, and including malignancy, there have been found no morphologically discernable lines of demarkation anywhere, but that from end to end all the clinically distinguished types of proliferative growth flow into one another by imperceptible gradations. The inference therefore would appear unavoidable that the degree of concentration of the chemical substance in the focus must also vary by imperceptible graduations, if the substance is to be capable of enforcing a reaction of similar gradation in the tissue. "Thus, by seeming to turn in a circle, we arrive at the conclusions that from the moment of the division-enforcing substance in the focus exceeding the limit of physiological tolerance of the normal cells, we would seem to witness the onset of proliferation of the affected cells, with simple hyperplasia as the threshold proliferation. . . . At the rate at which the concentration of the division-enforcing substance in the focus in creases, so would, according to our contention, also increase the rapidity of cell multiplication; in other words, so would the crowding of new cells at the focus, and therewith the energy behind the passive, outward, forward movement of those cells, the 'cell-a-tergo (Bardleben).' This process increasing by imperceptible gradations becomes clinically discernable at intervals, and is described successively by the clinical terms of hyperplasia, inflammatory new growth, benign tumor growth, carcinoma, carcino-sarcoma, sarcoma, the differences from our point of view consisting largely in the physical factor of more or less urgent crowding. Biologically considered there seems to exist no difference between sarcoma and carcinoma, or for that matter between an adenocarcinoma and a squamous cell carcinoma, and according to numerous previously quoted authors, no difference in principle between malignant and benign growth. Clinical distinction of this character, according to Waterman, are meaningless for the biological problem." We can quote no further, interesting as it would be, but all this agrees so thoroughly with what we have long thought and what is observed clinically, that it is pleasant to find it so wisely interpreted and held by scientific authority. Our author goes on to elaborate many points, and in the next issue discusses the subject of metastases and other distant effects of cancer: In these articles, however, there is constant reference to matters which concern the systemic or constitutional nature of cancer. The word metabolic occurs repeatedly, as also intoxication, and the author coins a new word "noxia" to represent the noxious element acquired by the originally affected cells, which he says can be destroyed when they enter normal serum, or the lymph or blood stream. According to our view the blood serum and lymph streams are never normal, but are the source of the cell intoxication, but when they are made normal by proper dietary, hygienic, and medicinal measures the cancerous process ceases, and does not return, without a recurrence of the living errors which derange them. Continuing our study of the surgeons' views of cancer, it may be well to mention other surgeons who from time to time, |