“There can be no subject which I think more likely to interest the mind of a surgeon than that of an endeavour to amend and alter the state of a cancerous constitution. The best timed and best conducted operation brings with it nothing but disgrace if the diseased propensities of the constitution are active and powerful. It is after an operation that, in my opinion, we are most particularly concerned to regulate the constitution, lest the disease should be revived or renewed by its disturbance. In addition to that attention, to tranquillise and invigorate the nervous system, and keep the digestive organs in as healthy a state as possible (which I have recommended in my first volume), I believe general experience sanctions the recommendation of a more vegetable because less stimulating diet, with the addition of so much milk, broth, and eggs, as seems necessary to prevent any declension of the patient’s strength. “Very recently Dr. Lambe has proposed a method of treating cancerous diseases, which is _wholly_ dietetic. He recommends the adoption of a strict vegetable regimen, to avoid the use of fermented liquors, and to substitute water purified by distillation in the place of common water as a beverage, and in all parts of diet in which common water is used, as tea, soups, &c. The grounds upon which he founds his opinion of the propriety of this advice, and the prospects of benefit which it holds out, may be seen in his _Reports on Cancer_, to which I refer my readers. “My own experience on the effects of this regimen is of course very limited. Nor does it authorise me to speak decidedly on the subject. But I think it right to observe that, in one case of cancerous ulceration in which it was used, the symptoms of the disease were, in my opinion, rendered more mild, the erysipelatous inflammation surrounding the ulcer was removed, and the life of the patient was, in my judgment, considerably prolonged. The more minute details of the facts constitute the sixth case of Dr. Lambe’s _Reports_. It seems to me very proper and desirable that the powers of the regimen recommended by Dr. Lambe should be fairly tried, for the following reasons:-- “Because I know some persons who, whilst confined to such diet, have enjoyed very good health; and further, I have known several persons, who did try the effects of such a regimen, declare that it was productive of considerable benefit. They were not, indeed, afflicted with cancer, but they were induced to adopt a change of diet to allay a state of nervous irritation and correct disorder of the digestive organs, upon which medicine had but little influence. “Because _it appears certain, in general, that the body can be perfectly nourished by vegetables_.