Medicine: Mobilizing for Cancer

Two well-handled events last week publicized the medical profession’s decision that to reduce cancer mortality* the public must be taught to go to a doctor the instant some physical abnormality appears, and that doctors must be taught to recognize the early stages of cancer. If cancer is caught at its initial appearance it can usually be cured by surgery or radium.

At Baltimore, Dr. Joseph Colt Bloodgood, clinical professor of surgery and director of the Garvan Experimental Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University,! presided over a three-day conference of medical men. Twenty-thousand letters had been sent inviting doctors to instruction in reading X-ray pictures of cancerous bones. Only 300 appeared at Baltimore, but events proved that the 300 needed Dr. Bloodgood’s instruction. He had photograph after photograph of cancerous bones and joints thrown on a screen. The 300 were asked to write down their diagnoses. At first very few were correct. But as projections continued scores mounted until at the end most of the doctors agreed in their picture readings, could return home more confident of making proper cancer diagnoses.

Dr. Bloodgood repeated the offer which Johns Hopkins and all the other great cancer clinics have made: if a doctor is uncertain of an X-ray diagnosis, he may mail the photograph to the clinic. Experts will report the reading to him and not make a charge unless the doctor says that his patient can afford to pay.

Dr. Edwin Charles Ernst, 45, of St. Louis, president of the new Radiological Research Institute, took the occasion to flay U. S. manufacturers of X-ray tubes. Bold was his charge: “The larger companies of unlimited financial resources apparently limit their researches and developments of improved apparatus or X-ray tubes to those improvements that promise large profits. One such organization in this country controls the patent rights to manufacture X-ray tubes exclusively** and as a result charges prohibitory prices [$125~$450] for the necessary tubes of the physicians who must purchase them for X-ray diagnosis and the treatment of cancer.

“At present these tubes are not satisfactory, certainly far inferior in quality to those made in Europe and much higher in price. Effective and beneficial research in the unlimited virgin field of radiology has thus been retarded for many years, perhaps more directly due to the practice of the company at present enjoying the X-ray tube monopoly by filing away useful patents which could and should have been employed by others in the interest of humanity and especially the treatment of cancer by a more effective X-ray radiation. . . .

“There is no question but that the X-ray tubes can be materially improved and made more powerful. We now produce X-rays of from 6,000 to 250,000 volts and, if we went to 400,000 volts, we could get practically radium rays from an X-ray tube. We know results would be better. But we cannot go that high, for we lack tubes to stand it, and so far no one has dared to tackle their development because of the patent monopoly.”

Last week, too, the U. S. Bureau of Standards announced that its Lauriston S. Taylor had developed an apparatus to standardize the measurement of the intensity of X-rays, so that a radiologist need no longer risk burning patients needlessly or dangerously.

At Toronto the Canadian Club provided a radio microphone when its officers learned that Lord Moynihan, in town for the dedication of the Banting Medical Institute (see p. 61) wished to tell the lay public about cancer. Said he, with all the power of a great surgeon and the prestige of a Lord:

“One in every seven of you who are listening to me over the radio and are more than 35 years old will die of cancer. . . . Cancer is not only a scourge. It is a dirty fighter. It takes men just at the time when their lives are of most service to their family circle, in their professional life or business life, and when their wisdom is of greatest value to the State. Cancer is cured by surgery. That is to say, patients live so long that they have time to die of something else. And they also live so long that they may be sure they are entirely free from the disease. . . .

“I am not distinguished from any other surgeon in this room, but I can give my personal experience in my life: I have lost only one case of cancer of the breast from operation, and it is clear, therefore, that surgery alone can offer little further help. We are doing the very limit of what is possible.

“In my judgment, we can go no further along the road of progress in the command of cancer unless we have the help of the public. We must have an educational campaign. We must make the public understand what cancer is, and how best its great dangers can be met. And, in the second place, we must undertake research.

“Cancer is always primarily a local disease.. It always begins in one place. It never begins as a blood condition, affecting first one and then the other. That is the most undeniable truth with regard to cancer. Secondly, where it is local and accessible to the surgeon, it is in every single case a curable disease. In the third place, cancer very rarely attacks a healthy organ. The moral is, you should keep yourself as fit as you can. . . .”

*150,000 yearly in the U. S., 50,000 in Great Britain, 500,000 in those civilized countries which keep vital statistics.

Dr. Bloodgood, 62, Milwaukee lawyer’s son, is son-in-law of the late Manhattan Publisher Henry Holt (Henry Holt & Co., text books). Dr. Bloodgood’s brother is Wheeler Peckham Bloodgood, 58, Milwaukee insurance lawyer, friend of the Progressive La Follettes (see p. 20).

**General Electric X-Ray Corp., of Chicago, until last February called Victor X-Ray Corp. This company, largest manufacturer in the U. S., is a subsidiary of General Electric Co. Chairman is Herbert Scott Blake; president, Charles F. Samms; consulting engineer. Dr. William David Coolidge, inventor of the Coolidge X-ray tube. Other U. S. X-ray equipment firms: Westinghouse Lamp Co., X-ray division; Kelley-Koett Manufacturing Co. (Covington, Ky.).