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countries (Germany, America, France, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland,
Russia and several of our Colonies) furnish records of an
increase very similar to our own.
The essential matter for us to learn is—how people get Cancer ;
and this question is not going to be settled by the tabulation of imperfect,
and often faulty, death certificates, any more than it is by
work restricted to research in a laboratory ; but, as in the case of so
many other diseases, by close observation and full local enquiry into
all the circumstances associated with the appearance of the disease in
the individual, by those who are trained for such work.
Wild theorising from conclusions based upon insufficient and
inaccurate premises has recently been much indulged in.
Owing to the circumstance that the increase in Cancer has
mainly affected the male sex, and especially the gastro-intestinal
tract, the food theory of infection has claimed many adherents. Tea,
sugar, tomatoes, tiesh, raw vegetables, have their advocates; but
though flesh-eating has certainly increased, more especially among the
working classes, there is no special increased prevalence of Cancer
among those classes, and in Dr. Tatham's Decennial Report for
1881-90, the comparative mortality figure for all occupied males is 44
and that for all unoccupied males is 96. The incidence of Cancer,
moreover, upon beef-eating Mohammedans in India is said not to
differ very widely from that upon the Hindus. The more general
dissemination of arsenic in food, clothing, etc., is also advanced as a
cause, and the fact that arsenic is present in soot is held to account
for the circumstance of the excessive mortality among chimneysweepers.
Flies have been held to act as carriers, and gnats, fleas and
bugs as inoculators. Sewage-polluted soil, and attacks of syphilis
are said to favour the occurrence of the disease.