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Owing to some interest and discussion on the subject, I made
the following report to the Council on the subject of cancer cases
in this district:—
CANCER CASES.
May 25th, 1914.
Gentlemen,
I have given this matter some considerable attention
during the past few years, and beg to advise your Council not
to make any hard and fast rule, but to allow your officials as
heretofore to treat each case on its own merits with a general
instruction to offer disinfection and scraping of the walls of the
rooms actually occupied by the patient, and destruction of the
bedding or clothing which has been subject to obvious discharges,
etc. I am fully aware of the recent articles in the
" Times," " Spectator," and other papers, but we are not yet
in a position to fully substantiate the fact of the infectious
character of the disease.
The Local Government Board have just recently on the
application of a town in the West of England declined to add
cancer to the list of their notifiable diseases on the ground that
there was not a general concensus of medical opinion as to the
infectious nature of cancer, and the facts on which the Board
base their decision are important.
I personally made inquiries some short time ago of several
cancer medical experts, and their opinions were very divergent
as to its infectivity.
Although the number of deaths from cancer (9) in 1913
was slightly over those of the three previous years, the average
for 7 years (1907—1913 inclusive) is under 8 deaths per annum.
I have the honour to be, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
J. S. TEW.