Cancer I suppose is the most dreaded of all diseases, but one of the most unnecessarily feared. Patients may appear at the dispensary for most trifling pains or stomach troubles, troubles that all of us would disregard, and when we inquire why it is that they have come, sometimes a long distance and at considerable expense, we find out that it is because they have recently heard or read something about cancer, or remembered that there is cancer in the family. We cannot be too careful to tell people that cancer is not hereditary. People are apt to think it hereditary, but this is one of the medical fallacies that we should all of us do our part to eradicate from the public mind. I will mention one or two other common groundless physical fears. We should teach people that if they have a pain in the left side of the chest the chances are about nine out of ten that the heart is perfectly sound. If they have a pain, as they say, "across the kidneys," the chances are ninety-nine out of one hundred that the kidneys are perfectly healthy. The newspaper advertisements of charlatans do all they can to make people think that a pain in the back must be kidney trouble. We must fight such poisonous influences. FOOTNOTE: [1] Conférence Interalliée des Mutilés. Paris, May, 1917. CHAPTER V MENTAL INVESTIGATION BY THE SOCIAL ASSISTANT (_continued_) _Fears and forgetfulness_ It is not merely because of a doctor's mental habit that I speak of life in terms of diagnosis and treatment. For though those particular words are medical, any part of life can be thus conveniently summed up. One tries to find out the facts about some region of life in which one works or plays, fights, loves, or worships (diagnosis), and then one tries to do something about it (treatment). If one makes a friend one tries to find out something about him and then to treat him accordingly. If one comes to a new city one tries to diagnose its geography and to direct one's self accordingly. If there is anything not included in that set of phrases about the behavior of the human being towards the world, I do not know it. Therefore it seems natural to sum up social work also in terms of diagnosis and treatment. I referred in the last chapter to social ignorance as a possible item in a social diagnosis. I meant to recall those parts of a person's outfit for dealing with life in which he is deficient because of _ignorance_, industrial ignorance, or educational ignorance, or physical ignorance. I went on to recall two other mental deficiencies or sources of incapacity, _shiftlessness_ and _instability_.