In regard to the bearing of all these figures upon the alleged apparent and not real increase of cancer, I may quote from Hoffman: “The evidence is so convincing” as to the reality of the increase of cancer “that it may be safely maintained that no other statistical conclusion in medicine is so concisely and incontrovertibly established as this: in any event, no satisfactory evidence is available to successfully contradict this conclusion at the present time. If all this evidence, however, is inconclusive and worthless, then no alternative remains but to discredit the statistical returns of every country in the world with regard to any single disease or group of diseases, although the returns are accepted as approximately accurate in regard to every other important cause of death.” [Illustration: Death Rate per 100000 Population From United States Mortality Statistics 1915 ] In order that the real increase in the mortality from cancer may be readily understood, the accompanying chart (now hanging before you) has been copied from that given in the volume of the United States Mortality Statistics for 1914, and it will help to visualize what has just been stated. The data for 1915 have been added through the courtesy of Mr. Rogers, Director of the Census, in a personal communication. The striking fact brought out in this chart is the comparison between the steadily diminishing death rate of tuberculosis, through careful medical supervision, and the steadily increasing death rate of cancer, under surgical care. While the mortality of tuberculosis has fallen from 201.9 persons in 1900 to 145.8 in 1915, or 56.1 less deaths in each 100,000 population, or over 27.7 per cent, the cancer death rate has risen in the same time from 63 to 81.1 per 100,000, or over 28.7 per cent. They have therefore approached each other by 56.4 per cent, and unless this rate of progression is changed in some way, the lines will have crossed one another in less than fifteen years more, even as that for organic heart disease has already crossed that of tuberculosis, it having risen almost 27 per cent. Another interesting lesson to be drawn from this chart is that the death rate from organic heart disease, nephritis, and apoplexy have all risen coincidently with that of cancer, only that the rate of the latter has outstripped them all. If we accept the fact that the increasing death rate of these three diseases is largely the result of modern civilization, especially from erroneous eating and drinking, it would appear that cancer is due to the same cause.