Publisher's Synopsis
From the introductory:
THE GREAT MENACE OF CIVILIZATION
Society is organized primarily for protection. Given protection from its enemies, the body politic will thrive and develop and fulfill its destiny according to the vital laws which govern it. In a parallel manner this is true of every living organism. Give it protection from its enemies and, other things being equal, it will adjust itself to the environment and thus complete its cycle of life. Volumes may be easily written on the subject; indeed volumes have been written on it and all around it.
But what concerns us in this little treatise, is the special organism which we call human. And among all its enemies, we shall deal with but one. This is an insidious foe which, since time immemorial, has worked under the cover of ignorance. For ages it has been a public menace. Terror is associated with its very name, nothing perhaps will blanch the cheeks more quickly than to be told: You have a cancer. It is like a sentence of death to which the execution is prescribed, replete with gruesome detail. A cloud of horrors at once rises up before tlie mind. The soul sickens. The world has changed.
Is it a small thing to rid the mind of this nightmare? Would it he a just thing to raise up hope out of despair if hope were only to be dashed to the ground? The answers come spontaneously to the lips of any ethical being. Surely, no one of common sense would attempt to raise such hope where no grounds for it exist. It would be morally criminal to do so -- reprehensible and extremely cruel.
Let us see what grounds we have on which to rear the hope of prevention and cure of what is popularly known as Cancer.
