From our study of inoperable and recurrent cancer, and of metastasis and the blood conditions in the disease, we see what a formidable task is before one who would attempt to lessen its morbidity and mortality. We see also how blind all have been who have so long looked to surgery to stay its progress. In my former lectures I collected and quoted statements from many surgeons of prominence in times past, and even some in quite recent times, all expressive of a belief in a constitutional origin of cancer, and many of them looking to a dietary cause. I also gave biochemical laboratory and experimental evidence showing the medical aspects of cancer. I then remarked that it seemed strange that the medical profession and the public had been so slow in accepting and acting on the accumulated evidence which I have tried to put before you in these and the former lectures.
The reason for this seems to be that the medical profession, being occupied largely with acute disease and apparently definite and speedy results, became readily discouraged with the unsatisfactory course commonly observed in cancer; as in the case of tuberculosis, until the revival of an interest in the latter in recent years, with the well known beneficial consequences. They, therefore, turned the cancer cases over to the surgeons, in the hope that they could do better.
By the brilliant advances in modern surgery along many lines, the laity also have become obsessed with the idea that it has limitless power in many directions, and have yielded to the knife in spite of the rising mortality of late years. The glamour of modern surgery and its often spectacular results have quite blinded the eyes of many to real facts.
It is not a little interesting to note that the period to which we have referred, 1910 to 1915, in which the mortality of tuberculosis has fallen so steadily while that of cancer has so steadily risen, even in greater proportion, is that in which active laboratory work has also dazzled the public and professional mind. The enormous activity with the microscope in regard to the minute structure of the diseased tissues, and the elaborate and extensive work done in animal experimentation, have turned the thoughts of many from the homely and practical studies of the human frame in its various departures from health; thus too little attention has been given to the deranged activities of its various organs, and the perverted metabolism which, has resulted from the stress and strain, with the temptations and errors accompanying the present intensity of human civilization.