A significant illustration of the steady increase in the mortality from cancer is shown by its fatality among women in England between the ages of forty-five and sixty-five. In the year 1875, of all deaths of women at this period of life, one in ten (in round numbers) was due to some form of malignant disease. In 1890 the tribute exacted by the disease had become one in eight. Ten years later--in 1900--of all women dying in England during this period of middle life, the toll of cancer was one in seven; and in 1910 the corresponding proportion was one in five! At this rate of increase it will not be many years before a full third of all the deaths of women at this time of life will be due to malignant disease. There can be little doubt that the same phenomenon would be found to pertain to American experience, were it possible to disentangle the facts from the obscurity in which they are now permitted to lie. It is a curious fact that in England until the year 1900--and, so far as we know, for thousands of years--the death-rate from consumption among women was considerably higher than that of malignant disease; that in 1903, for the first time, the cancer-mortality of women exceeded that of phthisis; and that in 1910 it had so far surpassed it that they are not likely ever again to be equal, unless we shall discover the cause of the more fatal plague. The theory has been put forth by certain writers that the increased death-rate from cancer is due, not to any increased frequency of the dissease, but rather to improved methods of detection. It is quite certain that fifty years ago, for instance, surgeons were less able and less willing to pronounce judgment regarding obscure cases of internal tumours. But if the better diagnosis of to-day accounts for some part of this increase since 1860, it does not seem probable that it can explain the rising death-rate of the last ten or fifteen years. The medical practitioner of 1900 was certainly as well qualified to pronounce upon the character of the disease as the surgeon or physician of to-day. Nevertheless, the cancer death-rate of England in 1910 had increased 16 per cent. above that of ten years before, and during the fifteen years 1895-1900 it had increased fully 28 per cent. Certainly in these last few years there has been no such increased ability to detect the disease as would account for all this. Yet another fact suggests doubt of this optimistic hypothesis. If the increased cancer death-rate were due merely to the increased ability of the physician or surgeon to recognize the ailment, we should certainly find that the increase of cancer would be seen only in those parts of the system, such as internal organs, where some degree of doubt might perhaps be entertained; while, on the other hand, there would be little or no increase discernible in the mortality of cancers affecting parts of the body where its nature could not be mistaken by any intelligent physician or surgeon. Now,