The relation of cancer to life assurance : a paper read at the Life Assurance Medical Officers' Association, May 5th, 1897, with a discussion / by Joseph Frank Payne.

  • Payne, Joseph Frank, 1840-1910.
Date:
[1897]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The relation of cancer to life assurance : a paper read at the Life Assurance Medical Officers' Association, May 5th, 1897, with a discussion / by Joseph Frank Payne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    because it is undoubtedly the fact that the children of the well-to-do survive in a much greater proportion than the children of the poor, and it seems to me highly probable that amongst these children of the poor who die under the age of five years, a number of individuals die who, if they had been better taken care of, and had survived, would have been more liable to Cancer and similar diseases. That, perhaps, is not a question practically coming before us in dealing with extras and matters of that kind, but it is a question which has a general interest. Dr. de Havilland Hall : I only wish to refer to one very small point in Dr. Payne’s paper, and that is with regard to the extreme difficulty of drawing our conclusion from a precancerous condition. This was forcibly brought before my notice by a gentleman who came to insure for a large sum in my office. The only thing I found against him. was that he had a moderate amount of emphy- syma. He was a man of 53 or 54. He was very hoarse, and he told me he had been hoarse for 15 or 20 years, and that the hoarseness was not getting worse, but he did not pay any attention to it. I was not satisfied with this, and I made him come to my house, and when he came I made a laryngoscopic examination, and I found he was suffering from laryngeal catarrh. I ended by recommending him for insurance, with a moderate addition for his emphysyma, and he was taken. I suggested that he should go under treatment, and advised him to consult Dr. Semon. Dr. Semon agreed with the diagnosis I had formed, but the patient would not carry out the treatment—he thought it was too much trouble. The thing gave him so little concern. Eighteen months later he came to me with malignant disease of his larynx, from which he died six months later. There was a case then, in which, when the patient presented himself for an insurance, there were only the conditions of ordinary chronic catarrh, which probably had existed for 16 or 21 years; and yet, within 18 months he gets malignant disease of his larynx. It was carefully considered in reference to this very point whether he was fit for insurance, and my opinion was confirmed by the perfectly independent opinion of Dr. Semon, who saw the man two