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24
It is to be hoped that the efforts being made in this and other
countries will soon lift the veil which hides the secret of that terrible
disease, cancer. The difficulties of diagnosis and the faulty certification
of mortality have combined to vitiate the statistics of this malady to
such an extent that it is dangerous to base conclusions upon them, but
personally I find it difficult to believe that some of the steadily progressive
increase indicated in even the last few Annual Reports of the
Registrar-General, can be explained by better diagnosis, and that it does
not represent a real increase of suffering and death from this disease.
It now seems almost certain that cancer is not due to a specific parasite
which enters the body from without, and that the related instances
which appeared to point to the contagiousness of cancer (of auto-infection,
of reported cases of cancer-a-deux, and of cancer-houses) were mere
coincidences—although it is possible that a susceptibility to cancer
may be transmitted to offspring. If cancer occurs, as there is now
good reason for believing that it does, in wild as well as tame animals,
and in savage as well as civilised man, the determining factors of its
causation must have an extensive range in nature.
ALCOHOLISM.
With legislation that recognizes the connection of alcoholism with
insanity, and with the municipal mind well attuned to appreciate the
connection between bad housing and alcoholism, the future is likely to
see some alleviation from this disease; but most will be effected by
educating the moral sense of the individual to see. that excessive
indulgence is a crime against one's self, the community, and even
posterity.
Many facts with reference to the abuse of alcohol, which it is of
great importance that the public should know and appreciate, were
embodied in the Report of the Departmental Committee which was
appointed to report upon Physical Deterioration ; and in some
boroughs the information has been placarded throughout the district.