or infectious; although under just the right conditions certain
malignant new growths can be inoculated in some animals of the same
species, but not in other species, and human cancer cannot be
transplanted on animals.
2. Although microörganisms of many kinds often have been found and
claimed as the cause of cancer, there has been no concurrence of opinion
in regard to them, and it is now pretty conclusively agreed that cancer
is _not_ caused by a microörganism or parasite.
3. Cancer is _not_ wholly a result of traumatism; although local injury
may have much to do with its development in some particular locality,
even as in connection with the late lesions of syphilis.
4. Cancer is _not_ hereditary in any appreciable degree; although some
tendency in that direction has been demonstrated in certain strains of
mice.
5. Occupation has _not_ any very great influence on the occurrence of
cancer; although it is more frequent in some pursuits than in others.
6. Cancer is _not_ altogether a disease of older years; although its
occurrence is decidedly influenced by advancing age.
7. It does _not_ especially belong to or affect any particular sex,
race, or class of persons.
8. Cancer is _not_ confined to any location or section of the earth, but
has been observed in all countries and climates.
But while laboratory and other investigations have not demonstrated any
single cause of cancer and have yielded only negative results, they
have, by elimination, cleared the way for a study of its cause along
other lines, which are bright with promise. They have also established
certain facts which confirm the views which from time to time have been
briefly expressed by many who were best acquainted with cancer; namely,
that, because of its constant recurrence, and from the failure of
surgery to check its rising mortality, it must be of a constitutional
nature, intimately associated with dietary or nutritional elements, as I
have elsewhere shown.[5]
The _positive_ results of laboratory investigation are more encouraging:
1. We know now that the local mass, which we call cancer, represents but
a deviation from the normal life and action of the ordinary cells of the
body. These once normal cells, for some as yet unexplained reason, take
on an abnormal or morbid action, with a continued tendency to malignancy
which invades and destroys contiguous tissue, and is associated with a
progressive anemia which destroys life.
2. Microscopic study has shown that there is a certain change in the
polarity of cells about to be cancer-genetic, with an altered relation
of the centrosome to the nucleus. These changes have been well
attributed to an alteration in the enzyme contained in the cell, which
further depends on the nutrition of the cell as influenced by a faulty
metabolism of food elements.
3. The exclusion of all other possible causes leads us naturally to look
to a disordered metabolism as a cause of the disturbed action of the
hitherto normal cells; and we find much to confirm this view both in
laboratory studies on the biochemistry of cancer, and also in clinical
and statistical observations.
4. The blood in advancing cancer has repeatedly been shown to exhibit
many manifest changes, which indicate vital alteration in the action of
the organs which form blood, and so control the nutrition of the body
and its cells.
5. Laboratory and clinical evidence demonstrate that the secretions and
excretions of the body, both in early and late stages of cancer, exhibit
departures from normal which deserve consideration. Although not one of
these has as yet been established as pathognomonic of cancer, they all
indicate metabolic disturbances which influence the nutrition of the
cellular elements, and so these secretory and excretory disturbances are
of importance in connection with its causation.
6. As all healthy cells of the body, by their catabolism and anabolism
contribute a hormone or something to the general circulation, so
experimental evidence shows that the cells of a cancer mass itself, when
fully developed, secrete a hormone or something which is poisonous to
animals, and which probably hastens the lethal progress of the disease.
7. Repeated laboratory experiences have demonstrated, in a most
remarkable manner, the absolute controlling effect of diet on the
development of inoculated cancer in mice and rats, so that the process
was inhibited almost entirely with certain vegetable feedings.
8. We thus see that as the laboratory has eliminated the local nature of
cancer, it has also, in a measure, established the fact that there are
medical aspects of the disease which further studies will show to be of
the utmost importance. These all tend to demonstrate its constitutional
origin, that is, its relation to deranged metabolism, which is now
recognized as the basis of so many diseases of more or less serious
character.
But clinical and statistical studies come in with overwhelming force to
confirm the correctness of this position.
1. We have already seen that with utter medical neglect the death rate
of cancer has steadily and greatly increased in the United States, of
late years, in spite of the prodigious advances of surgery during the
same time. This is also true in all the countries from which we have any
accurate statistics. We know also that tuberculosis, as a result of
careful medical attention, has decreased in mortality by almost as great
a percentage as cancer has increased. The same is reported by reliable
observers all over the civilized world.
2. Any number of observers, in many lands, have recorded the almost
entire absence of cancer among aborigines, living simple lives, largely
vegetarian; they have also shown the definite increase in the disease,
and in its mortality, in proportion to their adoption of the customs and
diet of so-called modern civilization.
3. This increase of cancer mortality seems to depend largely upon the
altered conditions of life attending advanced civilization, particularly
along the lines of self-indulgence in eating and drinking and in
indolence.
4. Statistics from many countries show that increase in the consumption
of meat, coffee, and alcoholic beverages, appears to be coincident with
a very great and proportionately greater augmentation of the mortality
from cancer.
5. Clinical observation has time and again shown the effect of specific
nerve strain and shock in the development of cancer; and there seems to
be little question but that the enormous nerve strain of modern life is
an element of importance in this direction, both through metabolic
disturbance and by direct action on living cells.
6. At present no clear demonstration is possible of the direct method by
which errors of metabolism effect the changes in cells to which we give
the name malignant, any more than we know how other alterations on the
body are produced; such as arterial degeneration, bone changes, obesity,
etc., which are recognized as due to metabolic derangement.
7. The results which have been observed in connection with the
starvation of cancer, by ligature of vessels, illustrate the relation of
the blood supply to growing cancer.
8. Finally, the repeated observation and report of the spontaneous
disappearance of cancer, by careful and competent medical men, shows
that conditions of the system may arise which are antagonistic to
malignant growth, even when it has begun to take place; just as there
are other conditions of the system which favor the aberrant action of
previously normal cells, resulting in cancer.
The medical aspects of cancer thus loom large, and appear in quite a
different light from that in which they have been commonly viewed. We
now begin to see some of the reasons why cancer is not primarily a
surgical disease, and some of the lines along which observation and
investigation should proceed; namely, biochemistry, secretory and
excretory derangements, metabolic disturbances, diet, etc., etc. The
subject is too new a one to afford a great amount of corroborative proof
at present, other than the long personal experience of the writer and
others, who have seen tumors disappear under means other than surgical,
X-ray, and radium. More clinical and laboratory investigations of human
beings are needed, and not simply microscopic studies and experiments on
animals, valuable as these have been in the advancement of medical
science in connection with other diseases.
We will now consider briefly some of the practical points in regard to
the successful treatment of cancer by means other than the knife. I will
not take time to review or even to mention the various methods and means
which have been proposed and advocated for the cure of cancer, only to
end in disappointment for the reason that they did not reach the basic
cause of the complaint. The very multiplicity of the suggestions proves
their futility.
The line of thought and practise to which I would devote your special
attention is not entirely new, but has been hinted at by many careful
observers during the past hundred years or more, though it has never
before been fully developed or strongly urged. But the experiences of
over forty years, together with much study, has so convinced me of the
correctness of the principles and practise which I advocate that I
cannot too strongly urge you to consider them fully and without bias,
and to put them to a satisfactory test, although I quite realize that
they are contrary to the generally accepted views of the profession and
laity.
The fundamental principle of my thesis lies in the fact that with the
so-called advance of modern civilization, certain diseases, for the last
fifteen years at least, have showed a steadily increasing mortality. The
deaths in the United States from apoplexy, nephritis, and heart disease
have steadily increased over ten, fifteen, and twenty per cent
respectively, and those from cancer 28.7 per cent. We all realize that
the results in the three former diseased conditions are from errors in
the mode of life, including eating and drinking, and indolence, and
careful study shows that cancer has the same origin. On the other hand,
as already stated, the deaths from tuberculosis have steadily declined
27.8 per cent under rational medical treatment, directed mainly along
the lines of correct nutrition: the death rate of tuberculosis and
cancer have thus approached each other 56.5 per cent, and at this rate
in fifteen years more the mortality from cancer will exceed that from
tuberculosis!
Careful and prolonged studies of cancer patients, both in the earlier
and later stages of the disease, as I have recorded elsewhere,[6] show
that there are always departures from normal metabolism, as is shown by
the condition of the blood, and in the excretion from the bowels,
kidneys, and skin, and in the salivary and hepatic secretions, and
possibly in those of the ductless glands. Time does not permit here of
elaborating this subject, which has been done elsewhere, but it is
evident that some combination of internal systemic disorders must be
recognized as the basic cause of the complaint, although at the present
time it is difficult to point to a single causative element, if, indeed,
it will ever be discovered.
But a broad view of metabolism and nutrition recognizes that all cell
changes, whether good or bad, depend on the character and composition of
the blood furnished to the tissues, although little definite may be
known concerning it. Thus, no one has demonstrated the single causative
change in the blood in arteriosclerosis, gout, rickets, scorbutus, etc.,
but no one questions that it exists, and we direct our therapeutic
measures accordingly, largely from experience.
The same is true in cancer. Most careful and prolonged study of the
patient in every respect has shown a certain uniformity in regard to
particular deviations from health, the correction of which has been
followed by a complete disappearance of tumors classed as malignant, so
that the connection must seem obvious to an unprejudiced mind. And yet
it cannot be claimed that the exact, single cause of the cancerous
growth has been demonstrated, and from the nature and character of the
systemic disorders found, it is evident that there can never be any
single remedy which can be rightly claimed as a cure for cancer.
But that cancer can be cured by medical means and without the knife is
absolutely certain, as the experience of many testify, and as the writer
has observed in so many cases during the past 30 and more years. Many of
the instances in the hands of others have occurred unexpectedly, and
without definite or careful study and record of the measures employed.
But in some way the condition of the blood and system has become altered
so that there has occurred a retrogressive process which resulted in the
absorption of the tumor. I may say that this was the case in regard to
the earlier patients in my own practise, when I observed that tumors of
the breast, which had been diagnosed as cancer by surgeons, disappeared
under dietetic and other measures given for some skin affection; later
observation and study have crystallized my views and confirmed my
methods of procedure, which I hope to make plain, as briefly as
possible, lack of time to explain everything must make me a little
dogmatic.
An absolutely vegetarian diet is the first requisite in the treatment
and prophylaxis of cancer, for, as mentioned, this has been found
experimentally to inhibit, often to a remarkable degree, the production
of artificially produced cancer in rats and mice, and experience
throughout the world has shown cancer to be extremely rare in
vegetarians. This diet, which should be maintained indefinitely, must be
rigorous and absolutely vegetarian, excluding animal protein, even eggs
and milk; butter is the only article allowed which does not grow, and of
this one quarter of a pound is to be taken daily, by a person weighing
150 pounds. Cereals are to be freely employed, eaten slowly, with a
fork, and with butter, and not with milk and sugar, though the latter
may be used moderately, where it seems necessary and where it perfectly
agrees with the patient.
Perfect mastication, with thorough insalivation, is very essential, and
I insist on at least half an hour being taken for even the lightest
meal. Coffee, chocolate, and cocoa are excluded from the diet, only weak
tea being allowed, with some postum or other artificial substitute for
coffee.
Alcohol in each and every form is absolutely excluded, as it always has
a very harmful effect on cancer. Sufficient water, not iced, should be
taken to answer to the needs of the system, and I commonly give half a
pint with each meal, and half a pint, hot, one hour before both
breakfast and the evening meal.
Cancer being a disease of advancing civilization, with all its
temptations and errors in living, it is essential that the cancer
subject lead a very simple and healthy life, with regular hours of
eating and sleeping, with a reasonable amount of exercise, and the
avoidance of everything which could disturb normal metabolism.
There is, of course, no single medicine which can cure cancer, but
proper medication plays a very important part in overcoming the disease
and should never be neglected or interrupted in any case; indeed, one
suffering from or threatened with cancer should be under the most
careful medical guidance indefinitely, and this is especially true after
the surgical removal of the tumor, or local manifestation of the morbid
process, as Abernethy so strongly asserted, nearly a hundred years ago.
Medical treatment lies mainly along the lines of elimination, which is
always found to be faulty, both by the bowels and kidneys. My records of
large numbers of private patients show that there is imperfect
intestinal secretion, both in the very early stages and late in cancer,
even before morphin is taken. Therefore I have long come to look upon
intestinal auto-intoxication as a prime factor of causation, and lately
Sir Arbuthnot Lane has spoken of cancer as a terminal result of
intestinal stasis. This constipation, however, is not to be met with
occasional purgatives, but by measures which will secure a good normal
evacuation once or oftener daily. My principal reliance for this is
cascara, in combination with other remedies, although I also very often
give once a week, on alternate days, two good laxatives of blue mass,
colocynth, and ipecac. Mineral waters, Russian oil, etc., are not
desirable, and enemata are resorted to only in emergencies.
The kidney secretion in early and late cancer is always faulty. This
does not refer to albumen and casts, or sugar, which are searched for
but seldom found. But very careful and repeated volumetric analyses of
its many normal ingredients reveal errors in its composition which are
of significance and which serve as a guide in therapy. There is always a
faulty nitrogenous partition, and in that of sulphur; indican is
commonly in excess, often very greatly so, and the chlorids and
phosphates and sulphates deranged. The urinary secretion will constantly
be found to be extremely deficient, both as to the actual quantity
passed in the 24 hours, and in its total solid contents, which are often
hardly one half of that called for by the body weight of the patient;
this I have verified by hundreds of analyses. As these errors are
corrected by proper treatment there will be a coincident improvement in
the vitality of the patient and in the tumor.
The remedy which I have largely relied on in these cases for many years
is acetate of potassa, and it is interesting to note that Ross[7] of
London claims that a cause of cancer is found in a disturbance in the
mineral contents of the blood, and that there is a lack of potassa, and
he gives as high as 90 grains of phosphate and carbonate of potassa in
the day, with excellent results. I commonly give the acetate in
combination with other remedies, thus ℞ Potass. acetatis ℥i, Tinct. Nuc.
Vom. ℨiv, Ext. Cascara fld. ℨi-ℨiv, Extr. Rumicis radicis fld. ad ℥iv,
M. Teaspoonful in water ½ hour before eating.
But in the long treatment necessary for these cases before the malignant
growth has quite disappeared, and possibly for a good while afterward,
there may be many remedies used with advantage to secure and maintain
that healthy metabolism requisite to overcome the cancerous habit. Iron
and arsenic, phosphates and strychnin, and even cod liver oil and many
reconstructive remedies and measures may bear their share in overcoming
this dire disease. Thyroid extract sometimes assists materially in
removing the malgrowth, but must be given with caution, and in
connection with other proper remedies; for sometimes it will promote
catabolism and disintegrate the diseased tissue faster than the
emunctories can remove the effete products, and these may poison the
system.
It has been difficult in a single address to present such a vast
subject, which is more or less new to many, in a clear and concise form,
and I fear that I have trespassed too greatly on your patience, and have
yet only imperfectly made matters clear. But I shall be satisfied if I
have excited your interest sufficiently to cause you to investigate the
medical aspects of cancer, in which lies the real problem of its
prevention and cure. Surgery has been tried faithfully by many brilliant
and honest men, some of whom now and then acknowledge the failure of the
knife to arrest the steadily increasing mortality from the disease,
which is now about 90 per cent of all those once attacked.
But I fully realize that there is danger in my strenuous advocacy of
other lines of treatment, lest these should not be fully and perfectly
carried out, with such intelligence, patience, and persistence, on the
part of the physician and patient as is requisite to accomplish the end
desired. For I must say that it is extremely tedious and tiresome to
care minutely for these patients, who should be seen at least weekly,
and even for months or years, with careful and accurate records,
innumerable urinary and blood analyses, etc., etc.
On the other hand, however, we have the alternatives of leaving the
patient to suffer and die, or to submit to a surgical operation with the
expectation of recurrence in a considerable proportion of cases,
attended often with greater suffering and final death.
My experience with the disease for forty years or more in private
practise, and for the last few years in my medical clinic for cancer, in
the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital, and in the wards of the hospital,
have so fully convinced me of the correctness of the views I have stated
here and elsewhere that I cannot too strongly beg you to give them due
consideration, and not simply to class them with the various passing
claims and suggestions regarding cancer, which have so often proved
illusory. For along the lines which I have presented lies the real
cancer problem, as I can demonstrate by many cases more or less similar
to those detailed in my little book.
INDEX
Acidity of saliva in cancer, 44, 146, 164, 199, 213, 221
Activity, increased surgical, not the solution of cancer problem, 242
Age as related to cancer, 50
Agnew on surgery in cancer, 93
Alcohol harmful in cancer, 157
Alkalescence of the blood in cancer, 132
Amino-acid nitrogen, increased in cancer, 42
Anabolism, 62
Anemia of cancer, 130
Appetite and taste, 63
Approach of death rate of cancer and tuberculosis, 87, 259
Argentine Republic, cancer in, 69
Australia, meat eating and cancer in, 70
Austria, cancer mortality in, 85
Bashford and Murray, 75
Basic cause of cancer, 147
Biopsy, danger of, in cancer, 123
Blindness as to results of surgery in cancer, 139, 240, 243
Blood in cancer, 131, 134, 137, 219, 235
Bones, cancer of, 130
Bovee on cancer of the uterus, 104
Breast, cancer of the, 97, 197
cancer mortality, 82
frequency of cancer in, 49
Butter, caloric value of, 166
value of, in cancer, 166, 263
Byrne, on cancer of the uterus, 102, 104
California, cancer mortality in, 79
Calories, daily amount of, in menu, 163
Cancer, anemia, 130
and civilization, 57, 72, 83
and dietary and medical treatment, results in, 188, 200‒237
and meat eating, 68‒71, 149
Cancer, and nitrogenous matter, 37, 150
and rice eating, 168
and tuberculosis, approach of death rate of, 87, 241, 259
comparative death rates of, 241
basic cause of, 147, 261
blindness as to results of surgery in, 139, 240
blood in, 131
cases, personal, 196
conception of hitherto wrong, 240
daily amount of calories in, 163
diet for, 157
dietetic and medical treatment of, 144
disappearing under general medical treatment, 175, 200‒237
en cuirasse, 131
hemoglobin in, 134, 219
houses, 59
inoperable, benefited by medical treatment, 209, 217
medical treatment of, patience necessary in, 170
mortality, chart showing, 87
increased, since educational propaganda, 78, 88, 242
not a local disease, 67
of bones, 130
of the breast, 49, 97, 197
of the gall bladder, 106
of the lip, 95
of the liver, 129
of the lungs, 130
of the mouth, 95
of the rectum, 106
of the skin, 130
of the stomach, 105
of the tongue, 95
of the uterus, 102
cured by medical treatment, 200‒237
vegetarian diet in, 224, 228
patients, directions for, 155
primary, removed by medical treatment, 200, 208
problem, not settled yet, 143
not solved by greater surgical activity, 242
the real, 149, 239
recurrent, 119
and medical treatment, 208
benefited by medical treatment, 209, 211, 214
red blood cells in, 134, 137, 219
relation of climate to, 58
research, negative results of, 248
positive results of, 250
saliva acid in, 44, 146, 199, 213, 221
specialists, 155
the real problem of, 239
tissue, a product of systemic changes, 142, 244
urinary excretion imperfect in, 173, 146, 218
urinary solids deficient in, 39, 172
urine deficient in, 146, 173, 218, 221
weight of patients in, 219, 226, 235
white blood corpuscles in, 219
wrong conception of, 240
Carcinoma cases, personal, 196
Carcinoma or epithelioma, 194, 195
Carcinosis, 130, 136
Catabolism, 62
Cause, basic, of cancer, 147, 261
Cereals, how cooked and eaten, 162, 164
Chalfant on cancer of the uterus, 105
Chart showing mortality of cancer, 87