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The death-rates from Cancer in England and Wales during
recent years have been as follows:
England and Wales.
Rate per thousand
Year. of population.
1913 1.064
1914 1.069
1915 1.121
1916 1.166
1917 1.210
1918 1.218
1919 1.145
1920 1.161
1921 1.215
1922 1.229
Cancer nowadays contributes one to every 12 deaths registered.
It is now as fatal as that other great scourge, Pulmonary Tuberculosis
or Phthisis. Cancer is most prevalent among those of
40 years of age and upwards. An excess of cancer in the female
sex is accounted for by the prevalence of cancer of the female
breasts and generative organs.
The increase in cancer mortality is world wide; and better
diagnosis, improved statistics and the increase in the mean duration
of life will explain much of this increase. To those patients who
hopefully ask for information as to progress, the doctor can nowadays
certainly point out something more definite than the tentative
theories of the past.
Cancer, is a disease which can often be prevented, if the
predisposing factors are recognised and removed; and if dealt
with in time, it can often be cured.
The problem is to get the case into the hands of a competent
medical adviser while it is still in the early and curable stage, or,
even more fortunately, while the patient exhibits merely those
conditions which are now widely recognised as the danger signals
of Cancer.