The prophylaxis of cancer / Charles H. Mayo.

  • Mayo, Charles H. (Charles Horace), 1865-1939.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The prophylaxis of cancer / Charles H. Mayo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    1/8
    CHARLES H. MAYO, M.D. Surgeon to St. Mary’s Hospital ROCHESTER, MINN. Among the great problems which confront the world to-day is that of cancer. The question of tuber- culosis has been practically answered. The bacillus is known, as well as its modes of entrance to the body, its varying methods of attack and the causes of death from the disease. Up to a few years ago what the public learned of tuberculosis was through the advertising of interested dealers of patent medicines, promoters of health resorts and the exaggerated statements of irreg- ular practitioners. To-day, with what may be called a world movement, tuberculosis is gradually being con- trolled and the percentage of deaths is yearly being les- sened. In view of the wonderful progress made in the pre- vention, care and curability of tuberculosis which has developed in the short time since the public was first taken into the work as assistants, is it not time that we should more generally diffuse what knowledge we have of cancer ? This world-wide disease is not confined to any certain people, but occurs among all races of mankind, and, indeed, is found throughout the vertebrate kingdom. Fish often have goiter, and in certain waters cancer seems to develop from these secondary changes in the thyroid. The disease also occurs in birds. In over a thousand instances primary cancer has been found in mice and thousands of cancers have been grown by inoc- ulation (Bashford). Domesticated animals are some- what more susceptible to it than animals in the wild * Chairman’s Address before the Section on Surgery of the American Medical Association, at the Sixty-first Annual Session, at St. Louis, June, 1910.