For First Violation of Rules—Offender Reads to Patient One Hour. Second
Violation—Banishment for Balance of Day.
“The dead-line is that thing, I suppose,” said Junkum, pointing to a
tape stretched upon standards around the bed at a distance of a yard.
“Is it a game?” questioned the hopeful Bettina. “No, Bettykin. It’s a
germ-cage. No germs can get out of that unless they’re carried out by
somebody or something. And, in that case, they’re boiled to death on
the gas-stove outside.”
At this moment Charley called for a drink of water. After he had
emptied the glass, his mother took it out and dropped it into the
disinfecting hot bath. Then she washed her hands, dried them on a strip
of the paper towel and dropped that in the basket.
“I see,” said Julia, the observant. “Nothing gets any scarlet fever on
it except what Charley touches. And everything he touches has to be
washed as soon as it comes out of the dead-line.”
“Exactly. We’ll make a trained nurse of you, yet, Junkum,” approved the
Health Master.
“Then,” said Julia slowly, “I think Bobs ought to wash his hands now.
Mother opened the door after handling Charley’s glass, and when he went
to watch her wash the glass, he put his hand on the knob.”
“One mark against Bobs,” announced the doctor. “The rigor of the game.”
A game it proved to be, with Charley for umpire, and a very keen
umpire, as he was the beneficiary of the penalties. For some days
Charley quite fattened on literature dispensed orally by the
incautious. Presently, however, they became so wary that it was hard to
catch them.
Then, indeed, was the doctor hard put to it to keep the invalid amused.
The children invented games and charades for him. A special telephone
wire was run to his room so that he might talk with his friends. Bobs
won commendations by flying a kite one windy day and passing the twine
up through Charley’s window, whereby the bedridden one spent a happy
afternoon “feeling her pull.” And the next day Betty won the first and
only dollar by discovering a small and early fly which, presumably, had
crawled in by the hole bored for the kite twine. As to any
encroachments upon the physical quiet of his patient or the protective
guardianship surrounding him, the Health Master was adamant, until, on
a day, after examining the prisoner’s throat and nose, and going over
him, as Mr. Clyde put it, “like a man buying a horse that’s cheaper
than he ought to be,” he sent for the Health Officer.
“It’s a clean throat,” said Dr. Merritt. “Never mind the desquamating
skin. We’ll call it off.”
Whereupon Charley was raised from his bed, and having symbolically
broken the tape-line about his bed, headed a solemn and slow procession
of the entire family to the front porch where he formally took down the
red placard and tore it in two. The halves still ornament the playroom,
as a memento.
After this memorable ceremony, Mrs. Clyde retired to the library and,
quite contrary to her usually self-restrained nature, dissolved into
illogical tears, in which condition she was found by the rest.
“I—I—I don’t know what’s the matter,” she sobbed, in response to her
husband’s inquiry. “It’s just because I hated the very thought of that
abominable red sign so,—as if we were unclean—like lepers.”
“Well, we’re not lepers and if we can continue in that blessed state,”
remarked Dr. Strong cheerfully, “we can escape most of the ills that
flesh is heir to. After all, from a scientific point of view, contagion
is merely the Latin synonym for a much shorter and uglier word.”
“Which is—” queried Mr. Clyde.
“Dirt,” said the Health Master.
VIII.
HOPE FOR THE HOPELESS
“Hopeless from the first,” said old Mrs. Sharpless, with a sigh, to her
daughter.
Mrs. Clyde nodded. “I suppose so. And she has so much to live for,
too.”
“What’s this that’s hopeless from the first?” asked the Health Master,
looking up from the novel which he was enjoying in what he called his
“lazy hour,” after luncheon.
“Mrs. Westerly’s case,” said the younger woman. “Even now that she’s
gone to the hospital, the family won’t admit that it’s cancer.”
“Ah, of the liver, I suppose,” commented the physician.
“Why on earth should you suppose that?” demanded Mrs. Sharpless
suspiciously.
“Why, because cancer of the liver is the only form which could possibly
be regarded as hopeless from the first.”
“All cancer, if it is really cancer, is hopeless,” declared the old
lady with vigorous dogmatism. “Don’t tell me. I’ve seen too many cases
die and too few get well.”
“Were those ‘few’ hopeless, too?” inquired Dr. Strong with bland
slyness.
“I guess they weren’t cancer, at all,” retorted Mrs. Sharpless; “just
doctors’ mistakes.”
“Doctors do make mistakes,” admitted the representative of the
profession, “and cancer is one of the diseases where they are most
commonly at fault. But the error isn’t of the kind that you suggest,
Grandma Sharpless. Where they go wrong so often is in mistaking cancer
for some less malignant trouble; not in mistaking the less malignant
forms for cancer. And that wastes thousands of lives every year which
might have been saved.”
“How could they have been saved?” asked the old lady combatively.
“Let me do the questioning for a minute, and perhaps we’ll get at that.
Now, these many cases that you’ve known: were most of the fatal ones
recent?”
“Not very,” she replied, after some consideration. “No; most of them
were from ten years ago, back.”
“Exactly. Now, the few that recovered: when did these occur?”
“Within a few years.”
“None of the old cases recovered?”
“No.”
“But a fair proportion of the more recent ones have?”
“Yes.”
“All these were operated on, weren’t they?”
“Yes; I believe they were. But not all that were operated on lived.”
“Did a single one of those not operated on live?”
“Not so far as I can remember.”
“Well, there we have the truth about cancer in a few words; or, anyway,
a good part of the truth. Up to twenty years ago or so, cancer was
practically incurable. It always returned after operation. That was
because the surgeon thought he needed only to cut out the cancer. Now
he knows better; he knows that he must cut out all the tissue and the
glands around the obvious cancer, and thus get the root of the growth
out of the system.”
“And that cures?” asked Mrs. Clyde.
“In a great majority of cases, _if it is done early enough_.” The
Health Master dropped his book and beat time with an emphatic
forefinger to his concluding words.
“But Agnes Westerly’s is cancer of the breast,” said Mrs. Clyde, as if
that clinched the case against the patient.
“Just about the most favorable locality.”
“I thought it was the worst.”
“Where on earth do intelligent women collect their superstitions about
cancer?” cried Dr. Strong. “Carcinoma of the breast is the commonest
form among women, and the easiest to handle. Show me a case in the
first stages and, with a good surgical hospital at hand, I’d almost
guarantee recovery. It’s simply a question of removing the entire
breast, and sometimes the adjacent glands. Ninety per cent of the early
cases should get well.”
“But the operation itself is so terrible,” shuddered Mrs. Clyde.
“Terrible? Unpleasant, I’ll admit. But if you mean terrible in the
sense of dangerous, or even serious, you’re far wrong again. The
percentage of mortality from the operation itself is negligible. But
the percentage of mortality without operation is 100 out of 100. So the
choice is an easy one.”
“They seem to hold out little hope for Agnes Westerly.”
“Let’s hear about the circumstances,” suggested Dr. Strong.
“About two years ago—”
“That’s a bad beginning,” interrupted the physician, shaking his head.
“—She noticed a small lump in her right breast. It didn’t trouble her
much—”
“It seldom does at the start.”
“—And she didn’t want to alarm her husband; so she said nothing about
it. It kept getting a little larger very slowly, but there was no
outside sore; so she thought it couldn’t be serious. If it were, she
thought, it would pain her.”
“That fatal mistake! Pain is a late symptom in cancer—usually too
late.”
“It was curious the way she finally came to find out. She read an
advertisement in the paper, headed, ‘Any Lump in Woman’s Breast is
Cancer.’”
“Yes; I know that advertisement. It’s put out by a scoundrel named
Chamlee. Surely, she didn’t try his torturing treatment?”
“Oh, no. Agnes is too intelligent for that. But it frightened her into
going to her doctor. He told her that a radical operation was her only
chance. She was terribly frightened,—more afraid of the knife than of
the disease, she told me,—and she insisted on delay until the pain grew
intolerable. And now, they say, there’s only a slight chance. Isn’t it
pitiful?”
“Pitiful, and typical. Mrs. Westerly, if she dies, is a type of
suicide, the suicide of fear and ignorance. Two years’ waiting! And
every day subtracting from her chance. That’s the curse of cancer; that
people won’t understand the vital necessity of promptness.”
“But is it true that any lump in a woman’s breast is cancer?” asked
Mrs. Sharpless.
“No; it’s a lie; a damnable lie, circulated by that quack to scare
foolish women into his toils. Most of such lumps are non-malignant
growths. This is true, though: that any lump in a woman’s breast is
suspicious. It may be cancer; or it may develop into cancer. The only
course is to find out.”
“How?”
‘“With the knife.”
“Isn’t that rather a severe method for a symptom that may not mean
anything?”
“Not too severe, considering the danger. Whatever the lump may be, it
has no business there in the breast, any more than a bullet has. If it
is only a small benign tumor, the process of taking it out is very
simple, and there is nothing further to do. While the patient is still
under the anaesthetic, a microscopical examination of the tissue, which
can be made in a few minutes in a well-equipped hospital, will
determine whether the growth is malignant. If so, the whole breast is
taken off, and the patient, in all probability, saved. If not, sew up
the wound, and the subject is none the worse. Much the better, in fact,
for the most innocent growth may develop cancer by irritation. Thirty
per cent, or more, of breast cancers develop in this way.”
“But irritation alone won’t cause cancer, will it?” asked Mrs. Clyde,
her restlessly inquiring mind reaching back, as was typical of her
mental processes, toward first causes.
“No. There must be something else. What that something is, we don’t
know. But we are pretty certain that it doesn’t develop unless there is
irritation of some kind.”
“Isn’t cancer a germ disease?”
“Nobody knows. Some day we may—probably shall—find out. Meantime we
have the knowledge of how to prevent it.”
“How to prevent a disease you don’t know the nature of?” said Mrs.
Sharpless incredulously. “That sounds like nonsense.”
“Does it? What about smallpox? We haven’t any idea of what smallpox
really is; but we are able to control it with practical certainty
through vaccination.”
“Doctors don’t vaccinate for cancer,” remarked the practical-minded old
lady.
“They have tried serums, but that is no use. As I said, the immediate
occasion of cancer is irritation. There is overwhelming proof that an
unhealing sore or irritation at any point is likely to result in the
development of a cancer at that point, and at least a highly probable
inference that, without such irritation, the disease would not
develop.”
“Then why not get rid of the irritation?”
“Ah, there’s the point. That’s where the tremendous life-saving could
be effected. Take a very simple instance, cancer of the lip. In a
thousand cases recorded by one of the Johns Hopkins experts, there
wasn’t one but had developed from a small sore, at first of innocent
nature. It isn’t too much to say that this particular manifestation of
cancer is absolutely preventable. If every person with a sore on the
lip which doesn’t heal within three weeks were to go to a good surgeon,
this hideous and defacing form of tumor would disappear from the earth.
As for carcinoma of the tongue, one of the least hopeful of all
varieties, no careful person need ever develop it. Good dentistry,
which keeps the mouth free of jagged tooth-edges, is half the battle.
The other half is caution on the part of smokers. If a white patch
develops in the mouth, tobacco should be given up at once. Unless the
patch heals within a few weeks, the patient should consult a physician,
and, if necessary, have it removed by a minor operation. That’s all
there is to that.”
“But if the irritant sore is internal?” inquired Mrs. Clyde.
“To the watchful it will give evidence of its presence, usually in
time. If it is in the intestines or stomach, there is generally some
uneasiness, vague, perhaps, but still suspicious, to announce the
danger. Surgical records covering a long period show that eighty per
cent of stomach cancers were preceded by definite gastric symptoms of
more than a year’s duration. If it is in the uterus, there are definite
signs which every woman ought to be taught to understand. And here, to
go back to the matter of cure, even if the discovery isn’t made until
cancer has actually developed, there is an excellent chance in the
early stages. Cancer of the stomach used to be sure doom to a hideous
death. Now, taking the cases as they come, the desperate chances with
the early cases, more than a quarter are saved in the best surgical
hospitals. Where the growth is in the womb or the intestines, with
reasonably early discovery, a generous half should be repaired and
returned to active life as good as new.”
“That doesn’t seem possible,” said Mrs. Sharpless flatly.
“Simply because you’ve been steeped in the fatalism which surrounds
cancer. That fatalism, which is so hard to combat, is what keeps women
from the saving hope of the knife. ‘I’ve got to die anyway,’ they say,
‘and I’m not going to be carved up before I die.’ And so they throw
away what chance they have. Oh, if only I had control of the newspapers
of this city for one day a week or a month,—just for a half-column
editorial,—what a saving of life I could effect! A little simple advice
in straight-out terms would teach the people of this community to avoid
poor Mrs. Westerly’s fate.”
“And drive ‘em all into the hands of the doctors,” said Mrs. Sharpless
shrewdly. “A fine fattening of fees for your trade, young man.”
“Do you think so? Do you think that cancer _ever_ fails to come to the
physician at last? And do you think the fee is less because the surgeon
has to do twice the amount of work with a hundredth of the hope of
success?”
“No-o-o,” admitted the old lady, with some hesitancy; “I didn’t think
of it in that light.”
“Few do. Oh, for the chance to teach people to think straight about
this! Publicity is what we need so bitterly, and the only publicity
goes to the quacks who pay for it, because the local newspapers don’t
want to write about ‘unpleasant topics,’ forsooth!”
“Do you want a chance for some publicity in a small way?” asked Mrs.
Clyde.
“Do I! Show me the chance.”
“The Mothers’ Association meets here this afternoon. We haven’t much
business on hand. Come in and talk to us for an hour.”
“Fine!” said the Health Master, with enthusiasm. “Half of that time
will do me. How many will be there?”
“About sixty.”
“Very well. Just have me introduced with the statement that I’m going
to talk informally on a subject of importance to all of you; and then
help me out with a little object lesson. I’ll want sixty sealed
envelopes for the members to draw.”
“Are you conducting a lottery, young man?” queried Grandma Sharpless.
“In a way. Rather I’m arranging an illustration for the great lottery
which Life and Death conduct.”
Two hours later, the business of the meeting having been concluded,
Mrs. Clyde asked, from the assembled mothers, the privilege of the
floor for Dr. Strong, and this being granted, aroused the curiosity of
the meeting by requesting each member to draw an envelope from the
basket which she carried around, while the presiding officer introduced
the speaker.
“Let me begin,” said the Health Master, “with an ungallant assumption.
I’m going to assume that I’m talking to a gathering of middle-aged
women. That being the case, I’m going on to a very unpleasant
statement, to wit, that one out of every eight women here may
reasonably expect to die of cancer in some form.”
A little subdued flutter passed through the room, and the name of Agnes
Westerly was whispered.
“Yes; it is Mrs. Westerly’s case which is responsible for my being
here,” said Dr. Strong, who had abnormally keen hearing. “I would like
to save at least part of the eight out of your number, who are
statistically doomed, from this probable fate. To bring the lesson home
to you, I have had each of you draw an envelope. Eight of these
represent death by cancer.”
Every eye in the room turned, with rather ghastly surmise, to the
little white squares. But old Mrs. Sharpless rose from her place,
marched upon the Health Master, as one who leads a charge, and in low
but vehement tones protested: “I won’t be a party to any such nonsense.
The idea! Scaring some woman that’s as well as you are into nervous
collapse with your black dot or red cross or whatever you’ve got inside
these envelopes.”
“Oh, Grandma Sharpless, Grandma Sharpless! Have you known me all this
time not to trust me further than that?” whispered the Health Master.
“Wait and see.”
A little woman near the rear of the room spoke up with a fine bravado:
“I’m not afraid. It can’t give me cancer.” Then a pause, and a sigh of
relief, which brought out a ripple of nervous laughter from the rest,
as she said, “There’s nothing in mine.”
“Nor in mine,” added a young and pretty woman, in the second row, who
had furtively and swiftly employed a hatpin to satisfy her curiosity.
“Nor mine!”—“Nor mine!” added a dozen voices, in varying tones of
alleviated suspense.
“Not in any of them,” said Dr. Strong, smiling. “My little design was
to arouse you collectively to a sense of the danger, not to frighten
you individually into hysterics.” (At this point Mrs. Sharpless sat
down abruptly and fanned a resentful face.) “The ugly fact remains,
however: one out of every eight here is marked for death by the most
dreadful of diseases, unless you do something about it.”
“What can we do?” inquired the minister’s wife, in the pause that
followed this statement.
“Educate yourselves. If, in the process, you educate others, so much
the better. Now I propose to tell you all about cancer in half an hour.
Does that sound like a large contract? When I say ‘all,’ I mean all
that it is necessary for you to know in order to protect yourselves.
And, for good measure, I’ll answer any questions—if I can—within the
limit of time.”
“What _is_ cancer?” asked a voice.
“Ah! There is one that I can’t answer. No one knows. If I told you that
it was a malignant tumor, that would be true, but it wouldn’t be an
answer, because we don’t know the real nature and underlying cause of
the tumor. Whether it is caused by a germ, science has not yet
determined. But though we know nothing of the fundamental cause of the
disease, we do understand, definitely, what is the immediate causative
influence. It practically always arises from some local sore or
irritation. Therefore—and here is my first important point—it is
preventable.”
“That would be only theoretically, wouldn’t it, Dr. Strong?” asked the
little woman who had first braved the venture of the sealed envelope.
“One can’t get through life without bumps and scratches.”
“True. But ordinary bumps or scratches properly looked after don’t
cause cancer. The sore must be an unhealing one, or the irritation a
continued condition, in order to be dangerous. Remember this: any sort
of a sore, inflammation, or scarification, external or internal, which
continues more than a few weeks, is an invitation to cancer. Therefore,
get rid of it.”
“But suppose the injury is in the stomach, where it can’t be got at?”
asked a member.
“Why can’t it be got at?” demanded Dr. Strong.
“How can it be got at?” retorted the questioner.
“By opening up the stomach and examining it.”
“Well, I don’t want anybody to open up my stomach just to see what is
inside it!” declared Mrs. Sharpless vigorously.
“Very likely not. Perhaps you’d feel different if you’d had steady pain
or indigestion for two or three years.”
“Does that mean cancer?” asked a tall, sallow woman anxiously.
“Not by any means necessarily. But it may well mean gastric ulcer, and
that may develop into cancer. Three fourths of the cases of carcinoma
of the stomach which come into the surgeon’s hands have developed from
gastric ulcer.”
“Is there no cure but the knife?” inquired Mrs. Clyde.
“Not for the cancer. For the gastric ulcer, yes. Careful medical care
and diet often cure it. The trouble is that patients insist on diet and
drugs in cases where they have proved themselves ineffectual. Those
cases should come to the surgeon. But it will take long to educate the
public to the significance of long-continued abdominal pain or
indigestion. The knife is the last thing they are willing to think of.”
“But stomach operations are terribly dangerous, aren’t they?” inquired
a member.
“Not any more. They were once. The operation for gastric ulcer in the
early stage is simple. Even developed cancer of the stomach can be
cured by the knife in from twenty-five to thirty per cent of the cases.
Without the knife, it is sure death. I’m glad we got to the stomach
first, because that is the most obscure and least hopeful of the common
locations of the growth. In carcinoma of the breast, the most prevalent
form among women, there is one simple, inclusive rule of prevention and
cure. Any lump in the breast should be regarded, as Blood-good of Johns
Hopkins puts it, ‘as an acute disease.’ It should come out immediately.
If such growths come at once to the surgeon, prevention and cure
together would save probably ninety per cent of those who now die from
this ‘creeping death,’ as our parents called it.
“Now, I’ll ask you to imagine for the moment that I am conducting a
clinic, for I’m not going to mince words in speaking of cancer of the
womb, the next commonest form. Any persistent irritation there is a
peril. If there is a slight, steady, and untimely discharge, that’s a
danger signal. The woman should at once have a microscopical
examination made. This is simple, almost painless, and practically a
sure determination of whether there is cancer or not. The thing to do
is to find out.”
“But if it is cancer, is there any chance?” asked the lady of the
hatpin.
“Would you regard tuberculosis as hopeless?”
“Of course not.”
“Your parents would have. But you have profited by popular education.
If the public understood what to do in cancer as thoroughly as they
know about tuberculosis, we’d save almost if not quite as many victims
from the more terrible disease. Fatalism is as out of place in the one
as in the other. The gist of the matter is taking the thing in time.
Let me read you what the chairman of the Cancer Campaign Committee of
the Congress of Surgeons of North America, Dr. Thomas S. Cullen, of
Baltimore, says: ‘Surgeons are heartsick to see the many cancer
patients begging for operations when the disease is so far advanced
that nothing can be done. Cancer is in the beginning a local process
and not a blood disease, and in its early stages can be completely
removed. When the cancer is small the surgeon can, with one fourth the
amount of labor, accomplish ten times the amount of good.’”
“Does that always mean the knife?” asked a timid-looking woman.
“Always. There is no other hope, once the malignant growth has begun.
But the knife is not so terrible. In fact, in the early stages it is
not terrible at all. Modern surgery has reduced pain to a minimum. The
strongest argument against dread is a visit to a well-equipped surgical
hospital, where one can see patients sitting up in bed and enjoying
life a few days after a major operation. Even at the worst, the knife
is less terrible than death, its certain alternative.”
“Why do you call it the certain alternative?” asked the minister’s
wife. “I have seen facial cancer cured by concentrated ray treatment.”
“That wasn’t cancer; it was lupus,” replied Dr. Strong; “a wholly
different thing. True cancer of the face in its commonest location, the
lips, is the most frequently cured of any form, but only by operation.
Now here’s an interesting and suggestive point; taking lip-cancer
patients as they come to us, we get perhaps sixty-five per cent of
complete cures. With cancer of the womb, we get in all not more than
forty per cent of recoveries. Perhaps some of you will be able to
suggest the explanation for this contrast.”
“Because cancer of the lip isn’t as deadly a disease,” ventured some
one.
“Cancer is cancer, wherever it is located. Unless it is removed it is
always and equally deadly.”
“Then it is because the internal operation is so much more dangerous,”
offered another member.
“No; uterine operations are easy and simple. It is simply because the
sore on the face is obvious, plain, unmistakable evidence of something
wrong; and the patient ordinarily gets into the surgeon’s hands early;
that is, before the roots of the growth have spread and involved life
itself. The difference in mortality between carcinoma of the lip and
carcinoma of the womb is the difference between early operation and
delayed operation. If uterine cancer or breast cancer were discovered
as early as lip cancer, we’d save practically as many of the internal
as we do of the external cases. And if all the lip cancer cases were
noticed at the first development, we’d save ninety-five per cent of
them.”
“Isn’t it the business of the physician to find out about the internal
forms?” asked Mrs. Sharpless.
“Often the physician hasn’t the chance. The woman ought to do the first
diagnosing herself. That is, she must be taught to recognize suspicious
symptoms. In Germany there has been a campaign of education among women
on cancer of the womb. The result is that more than twice as many
Germans come to the operating table, in time to give a fair chance of
permanent recovery in this class of cases, as do Americans.”
“How is the American woman, who knows nothing about such matters, to
find out?” queried the minister’s wife.
“There is a campaign of education now under way here. Publications
giving the basic facts about cancer, its prevention and cure, in simple
and popular form, can be had from the American Society for the Control
of Cancer,—Thomas M. Debevoise, secretary, 62 Cedar Street, New York
City; or more detailed advice can be had from the Cancer Campaign
Committee of the Congress of Surgeons of North America, Dr. Thomas S.
Cullen, chairman, 3 West Preston Street, Baltimore; or from Dr. F. R.
Green, 535 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, secretary of the Council
of Health and Public Instruction of the American Medical Association.”
“Why not more easily and readily one’s own physician?” asked Mrs.
Clyde.
“Women don’t go to their own physicians early enough. It is necessary
that they be trained to understand symptoms which do not at first seem
serious enough for medical attention. Besides, I regret to confess, in
this matter of cancer our physicians need educating, too. They are too
prone to say, if they are not sure of the diagnosis, ‘Wait and see.’
Waiting to see is what kills three fourths of the women who succumb to
cancer. Let me illustrate this peril by two cases which have come under
my observation: The wife of a lawyer in a Western city had a severe
attack of stomach trouble. Her doctor, a young and open-minded man, had
the courage to say, ‘I don’t know. But I’m afraid it’s cancer. You’d
better go to such-and-such a hospital and let them see.’ The woman
went. An exploratory incision was made and carcinoma found in the early
stage. It was cut out and to-day she is as good as new.
“Now, this same lawyer had a friend who had been treated for months by
a stomach specialist of some reputation. Under the treatment he had
grown steadily thinner, paler, and weaker. ‘Indigestion, gastric
intoxication,’ the specialist repeated, parrotlike, until the man
himself, in his misery, began to suspect. At this point the lawyer
friend got hold of him and took him to the hospital where his wife had
been. The surgeons refused the case and sent the man away to die.
Indignant, the lawyer sought the superintendent of the hospital.
“‘Why won’t you take my friend’s case?’
“‘It is inoperable.’
“‘Isn’t it cancer of the stomach, like my wife’s?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘You cured my wife. Why can’t you cure my friend?’
“The official shook his head.
“I want an answer,” insisted the lawyer.
“‘Well, frankly,’ said the other, ‘your wife’s physician knew his
business. Your friend’s physician is a fool. He has killed his patient
by delay.’
“Back home went the lawyer, and spread that story quietly. To-day the
specialist’s practice is almost ruined; but he has learned an expensive
lesson. The moral is this: If your doctor is doubtful whether your
trouble is cancerous, and advises delay, get another doctor.
“Then, there is the ‘conservative’ type of practitioner, who is timid
about making a complete job of his operation. One of this kind had the
case of an acquaintance of mine who was stricken with cancer of the
breast. The physician, under persuasion of his patient, I presume,
advised excising only the tumor itself, but the husband, who had been
reading up on cancer, insisted on a radical operation. The entire
breast was removed. A year later the woman’s unmarried sister was
afflicted in exactly the same way; but the discovery was made earlier,
so that the case was a distinctly favorable one. The girl, however,
would not consent to the radical operation, and the physician (the same
man) declared it unnecessary. The tumor alone was cut out. The cancer
reappeared and another operation was necessary. The girl died after
cruel suffering. The married sister is alive, and, five years after the
operation, as sound as a bell. That physician is a wiser man; also a
sadder one. There’s a special moral to this, too: the operator has but
one chance; he must do his work thoroughly, or he might better not do
it at all. When cancer returns after operation—which means that the
roots were not eradicated—it is invariably fatal.
“Here are a few things which I want every one of you to remember. Had I
had time I’d have had them printed for each of you to take home, so
important do I think them:—
“No cancer is hopeless when discovered early.
“Most cancer, discovered early, is permanently curable.
“The only cure is the knife.
“Medicines are worse than useless.
“Delay is more than dangerous; it is deadly.
“The one hope, and a strong one, is prompt and radical operation. A
half-operation is worse than none at all.
“Most, if not all, cancer is preventable by correcting the minor
difficulty from which it develops.
“With recognition of, and prompt action upon early symptoms, the death
rate can be cut down at least a half; probably more.
“The fatalism which says: ‘If it’s cancer, I might as well give up,’ is
foolish, cowardly, and suicidal.
“And, finally, here is some simple advice, intelligible to any thinking
human being, which has been indorsed in printed form by the Congress of
Surgeons of North America:—
“‘Be careful of persistent sores or irritations, external or internal.
“‘Be careful of yourself, without undue worry. At the first suspicious
symptom go to some good physician and demand the truth. Don’t wait for
pain to develop.
“‘If the doctor suspects cancer insist that he confirm or disprove his
suspicions.
“‘Don’t be a hopeless fatalist. If it’s cancer face it bravely. With
courage and prompt action the chances of recovery are all in your
favor.
“‘Don’t defer an advised operation even for a day; and don’t shrink
from the merciful knife, when the alternative is the merciless anguish
of slow death.’
“For the woman who fears the knife, Dr. Charles H. Mayo, one of the
greatest of living surgeons, has spoken the final words: ‘The risk is
not in surgery, but in _delayed surgery_.’
“I have said my say, ladies, and there are five minutes left. Has any
one any further questions?”
There was none. But as he stepped down, Mrs. Sharpless whispered to
him: “I watched them while you talked, and half of those women are
thinking, and thinking _hard_.”
Six months thereafter, Mrs. Clyde came into the Health Master’s office
one day.
“I’ve just come from a sort of experience meeting of the Mothers’
Club,” she said.
“What was the topic this time?” asked Dr. Strong.
“Aftermath.”
“Of what?”
“Your cancer talk.”
“Anything definite?”
“Definite, indeed! Between fifteen and twenty of the members went away
from that meeting where you talked, suspecting themselves of cancer.”
“That’s too many.”
“Yes. Ten of them had their fears set at rest right away.”
“I’m sorry to have frightened them; but one has to do a little harm in
aiming at almost any good.”
“This was worth it. Half a dozen others had minor operations.”
“Perhaps saving major ones later.”
“Very likely. And four of them actually had cancer. Three out of the
four are going to be well women. The fourth has an even chance. Dr.
Strong, I don’t think you’ve done so good a day’s work since you
brought health into this house.”
“I thank you,” said the doctor simply; “I think you are right. And
you’ve given me the most profound and about the rarest satisfaction
with which the physician is ever rewarded.”
“And that is?” she asked.
“The practical certainty of having definitely saved human life,” said
the Health Master.
IX.
THE GOOD GRAY DOCTOR
A twenty-dollar bill! Crisp, fresh, and golden, it rose monumentally
from the basis of nickels, dimes, and quarters which made up the
customary collection of the Bairdstown Memorial Church. Even the
generosity of the Clyde family, who, whenever they spent a week-end at
Mr. Clyde’s farm outside the little city, attended the Sunday services,
looked meager and insignificant beside its yellow-backed splendor.
Deacon Wilkes, passing the plate, gazed at it in fascination.
Subsequent contributors surreptitiously touched it in depositing their
own modest offerings, as if to make certain of its substance. It was
even said at the Wednesday Sewing Circle that the Rev. Mr. Huddleston,
from his eminence in the pulpit, had marked its colorful glint with an
instant and benign eye and had changed the final hymn to one which
specially celebrated the glory of giving.
In the Clyde pew also there was one who specially noted the donor, but
with an expression far from benign. Dr. Strong’s appraising glance
ranged over the plump and glossy perfection of the stranger, his
symphonic grayness, beginning at his gray-suède-shod feet, one of which
unobtrusively protruded into the aisle, verging upward through gray
sock and trouser to gray frock coat, generously cut, and terminating at
the sleek gray head. Even the tall hat which the man dandled on his
knees was gray. Against this Quakerish color-scheme the wearer’s face
stood out, large, pink, and heavy-jowled, lighted by restless brown
eyes. His manner was at once important and reverent, and his “amen” a
masterpiece of unction. No such impressive outlander had visited
Bairdstown for many a moon.
After the service the visitor went forward to speak with Mr.
Huddleston. At the same time Dr. Strong strolled up the aisle and
contrived to pass the two so, as to obtain a face-to-face view of the
stranger.
“At nine o’clock to-morrow, then, and I shall be delighted to see you,”
the pastor was saying as Dr. Strong passed.
“Good-morning, Professor,” said Dr. Strong, with an accent on the final
word as slight as the nod which accompanied it.
“Good-morning! Good-morning!” returned the other heartily. But his
glance, as it followed the man who had accosted him, was puzzled and
not wholly untroubled.
“Who is your munificent friend?” asked Mrs. Clyde, as the Health Master
emerged from the church and joined her husband and herself in their
car.
“When I last ran across him he called himself Professor Graham Gray,
the Great Gray Benefactor,” replied Dr. Strong.
“Dresses the part, doesn’t he?” observed Mr. Clyde. “Where was it that
you knew him?”
“On the Pacific Coast, five years ago. He was then ‘itinerating’—the
quack term for traveling from place to place, picking up such practice
as may be had by flamboyant advertising. Itinerating in eyes, as he
would probably put it.”
“A wandering quack oculist?”
“Optician, rather, since he carried his own stock of glasses. In fact
that’s where his profit came in. He advertised treatment free and
charged two or three dollars for the glasses, special rates to
schoolchildren. The scheme is an old one and a devilish. Half of the
children in San Luis Obispo County, where I chanced upon his trail,
were wearing his vision-twisters by the time he was through with them.”
“What kind of glasses were they?”
“Sometimes magnifying lenses. Mostly just plain window glass. Few
children escaped him, for he would tell the parents that only prompt
action could avert blindness.”
“At least the plain glass couldn’t hurt the children,” suggested Mrs.
Clyde.
“Couldn’t it! It couldn’t fail to hurt them. Modify the sight of a
delicate instrument like a child’s eye continuously by the most
transparent of barriers, and it is bound to go wrong soon. The
magnifying glasses are far worse. There are hundreds of children in
that one locality alone who will carry the stigma of his quackery
throughout their lives.”
“Do you think he is here with a view to practicing his amiable trade?”
inquired Clyde.
“Only in part, if at all. I understand that he has changed his line.”
“How comes he by all that showy money, then?”
“By murder.”
The Clydes, accustomed to their physician’s hammerstroke turns of
speech, took this under consideration.
“But he wasn’t committing murder in the church just now, I suppose,”
insinuated Mrs. Clyde at length.
“Not directly. His immediate business there, I suspect, was bribery.”
“Of whom?”
“The minister.”
“Oh, come, Strong!” protested Mr. Clyde. “Mr. Huddleston isn’t an
intellectual giant, I grant you; but he’s certainly a well-meaning and
honorable old fellow.”
“Some cynical philosopher has remarked that wicked men have a talent
for doing harm, but fools have a genius. Mr. Huddleston’s goodness and
honesty, taken in connection with his hopeless ignorance of human
nature, are just so much capital to hand for a scoundrel like this
Gray.”
“What does he expect to get for his twenty-dol-lar bill?”
“First, a reputation for piety and generosity. Second, that reputation
duly certified to by the leading minister of the town.”
“In other words, a testimonial.”
“Precisely. For home use, and cheap at twenty dollars. Preparatory to
operating in a town, your itinerating quack bribes two people—if he
can. First, the editor of the local paper; second, the pastor of the
leading church. The editor usually takes the money with his eyes wide
open; the minister with his eyes tight shut.”
“How can his eyes be shut to such a business?” asked Mrs. Clyde.
“Because so much dust has been thrown in them by the so-called
religious journals.”
“Surely you don’t mean that religious journals exploit quackery in
their pages!” cried Mrs. Clyde.
“They are the mainstay of the quack and patent medicine business,”
declared the Health Master. “Leaving out the Christian Science papers,
which, of course, don’t touch this dirty money, the religious press of
all denominations, with a few honorable individual exceptions, sells
out to any form of medical fraud which has a dollar to spend. Is it
strange that the judgment of some of the clergy, who implicitly trust
in their sectarian publications, becomes distorted? It’s an even chance
that our Great Gray faker’s advertisement is in the religious weekly
which lies on Mr. Huddleston’s study-table at this moment.”
Grandma Sharpless turned around from her seat in front, where she
always ensconced herself so that, as she put it, she could see what was
coming in time to jump. “I know it is,” she stated quietly. “For while
I was waiting in the parsonage last week I picked up the ‘Church
Pillar’ and saw it there.”
“Trust Grandma Sharpless’s eyes not to miss anything that comes within
their range,” said Dr. Strong.
“Well, I missed the sense of that advertisement till just now,”
retorted the old lady. “I’ve just remembered about this Graham Gray.”
“What about him?” asked the Health Master with eagerness, for Mrs.
Sharpless’s memory was as reliable for retaining salient facts as her
vision was for discerning them. “Do you know him?”
“Only by his works. Last year a traveling doctor of that name stopped
over at Greenvale, twenty miles down the river, and gave some of his
lectures to Suffering Womanhood, or some such folderol. He got hold of
Sally Griffin, niece of our farmer here, while she was visiting there.
Sally’s as sound as a pippin, except for an occasional spell of
fool-in-the-head, and I guess no school of doctoring ever helps that
common ailment much. Well, this Gray got her scared out of her wits
with symptoms, and sold her twenty-five dollars’ worth of medicine to
cure her of something or other she didn’t have. Cured!” sniffed the
lively narrator. “If I hadn’t taken the stuff away from her and locked
it up, I expect she’d be in the churchyard by now.”
“The whole philosophy of quackery explicated and punctured, by one who
knows,” chuckled Dr. Strong.
“None of your palaver with me, young man!” returned the brisk old lady,
who was devoted to the Health Master, and showed it by a policy of
determined opposition of the letter and whole-hearted support of the
spirit and deed, in all things. “Probably he knows as much as most of
your regular doctors, at that!”
“At least he seems to know human nature. That’s the strong point of the
charlatan. But have you got any of his medicine left?”
“Yes; I think I can lay my hands on what’s left of it. I remember that
Sally boohooed like a baby, grown woman that she is, when I took it
away from her.” Dr. Strong’s eyebrows went up sharply. “As soon as we
get to the house I’ll look it up.”
On their arrival at the roomy old farmstead which Mr. Clyde had
remodeled and modernized for what he called “an occasional three days
of grace” from his business in the city of Worthington, Grandma
Sharpless set about the search, and presently came to the living-room
bearing in one hand a large bottle and in the other a newspaper.
“Since you’re interested in Professor Gray,” she said, “here’s what he
says about himself in yesterday’s ‘Bairdstown Bugle.’ I do think,” she
added, “that the Honorable Silas Harris might be in better business
with his paper than publishing such truck as this. Listen to it.”