Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xvi what should the medical pbactitioneb do about canceb? The answer to the question, "What should the medical practitioner do about cancer?" in accordance with modern custom, seems plain, namely, "Leave it to the surgeon." But why, and is this really the correct thing to do? Or, shall the disease be left to the advertising quacks? It is now pretty generally believed by the medical profession and the laity that surgery offers the only hope in cancer. However, I hope to show that real cancer, other than epithelioma of the skin--on which latter so many of the arguments for surgery are based--is a medical rather than a surgical disease, and that with proper and prolonged dietary and medical treatment the results are far better than from surgical intervention. Careful medical attention must be given to the disease if we ever hope to diminish the distressing increase in its morbidity and mortality, as I have many times tried to show. Read before the Litchfield County (Connecticut) Medical Society, July 3, 1917. The reasons why the medical profession and the laity have so universally accepted the dictum that cancer belongs to the domain of surgery are not difficult to discern. The medical profession, being occupied largely with acute disease, with apparently definite and speedy results, very naturally became discouraged by the unsatisfactory course commonly observed in cancer; as was the case in regard to tuberculosis, until the revival of interest in the latter in recent years, with the well-known beneficial consequences, to be considered later. Then the surgeons took up the treatment of cancer, and, as the wounds generally healed well after excision and the immediate results of the operation seemed favor
