Cancer: Its Cause and Treatment, Volume 1 (of 2)Bulkley, Lucius Duncan
Science
Cancer: Its Cause and Treatment, Volume 1 (of 2)
Bulkley, Lucius Duncan
Cancer
The lectures were prepared for and delivered to practicing physicians at
the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital, in connection with the regular
Wednesday lectures on Diseases of the Skin, as I felt that I should give
them the benefit of what I felt to be of value in my own practice,
private and public.
Although holding the views here expressed for many years I have
hesitated writing strongly on the subject before, lest I should be
misunderstood or misjudged: for favorable results based solely on a
clinical diagnosis of cancer are always doubted. I have also feared lest
by advocating a dietetic and medical consideration and treatment of
cancer, which possibly might not be carried out exactly, I might really
do harm; since some might be led to neglect operative measures in proper
cases, at the proper time; and so in certain instances great injury and
injustice might be done to the patient, and the time pass in which a
surgical operation might possibly be of service.
But with my views and experience, strengthened greatly by what studies I
have been able to make in the midst of a busy professional life, I now
feel that I should do wrong in not presenting the results and
conclusions of my study and observation. And I wish also to enter my
strong protest against the course which is usually followed in regard to
cancer, both before and after operation. With a rather extended
experience during the last forty years, I have rarely if ever found a
patient with cancer who has received adequate and continuous medical
care before operation, with a view of discovering and rectifying the
cause of the morbid growth. Too often when a cancer is suspected or
discovered it is taken as a foregone conclusion that the malady is
hopeless, except as the _results of the disease_, that is the new
growth, may be removed by the knife, X-ray, radium, caustics, etc. And
after a surgical operation, as far as my observation goes, the patients
are invariably left entirely to their own resources, with the hope,
alas, too often futile, that the tumor will not regrow, but with no
attempt to so guide the life that there shall not be the same tendency
to a recurrent malignant new-formation. Against this latter course I
also raise my earnest protest.
In presenting matter from literature bearing on the subject under
discussion I am well aware that I have hardly more than touched the
surface of the deep ocean of recorded observations on cancer, but it was
the best that I could do in my busy life. I only hope that others will
take up in earnest the subjects here presented, and that this pioneer
work may lead to the building of a strong and permanent structure
regarding the true basic cause of cancer. Truth never fears proof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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