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.

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    knowledge to the public by a mistaken regard for the sensitive feelings of the patients, until their condition has become practically helpless from an operative stand- point. The layman requires considerable explanation before he can be made to realize that the risk is not in surgery, but in delayed surgery. He considers all oper- ations alike in their danger and severity, while in reality there is a very wide variation. It is a simple operation to remove stones from the gall-bladder. A delayed oper- ation may require their removal from the cystic or even the common duct, and very often a pancreatitis will have developed. On an average, one in thirty of these cases has developed cancer as a local condition around a gall- stone which has chronically irritated some mucous area of the gall-bladder duct. In nearly all of the cases of primary cancer of the gall-bladder and liver ducts gall- stones have been found. If surgery for cancer is in disrepute to-day it is partly because too large a proportion of patients are accepted without explanation for operation at a stage when there is no possibility of cure, and when their fam- ilies, if not themselves, should have been informed of their hopeless condition. If they had been left they would have served as living examples of the results of delay instead of the unsatisfactory results of ill-advised surgery. We can, however, say this: that we know nearly or quite as much concerning cancer as we do of other medical and surgical diseases. The danger of local irri- tation of a chronic character has been underestimated. Our present knowledge of the prophylaxis of cancer indi- cates that all tumors should have a medical examination and the majority of them a surgical consultation in order that we recognize the precancerous condition, and reduce mortality by prevention. Reprinted from the Journal of the American Medical Association Nov. 5, 1910. Vol. LV, pp. 1605-1607 Copyright, 1910 American Medical Association, 535 Dearborn Ave., Chicago