“Ah, there’s the point. That’s where the tremendous life-saving could be effected. Take a very simple instance, cancer of the lip. In a thousand cases recorded by one of the Johns Hopkins experts, there wasn’t one but had developed from a small sore, at first of innocent nature. It isn’t too much to say that this particular manifestation of cancer is absolutely preventable. If every person with a sore on the lip which doesn’t heal within three weeks were to go to a good surgeon, this hideous and defacing form of tumor would disappear from the earth. As for carcinoma of the tongue, one of the least hopeful of all varieties, no careful person need ever develop it. Good dentistry, which keeps the mouth free of jagged tooth-edges, is half the battle. The other half is caution on the part of smokers. If a white patch develops in the mouth, tobacco should be given up at once. Unless the patch heals within a few weeks, the patient should consult a physician, and, if necessary, have it removed by a minor operation. That’s all there is to that.” “But if the irritant sore is internal?” inquired Mrs. Clyde. “To the watchful it will give evidence of its presence, usually in time. If it is in the intestines or stomach, there is generally some uneasiness, vague, perhaps, but still suspicious, to announce the danger. Surgical records covering a long period show that eighty per cent of stomach cancers were preceded by definite gastric symptoms of more than a year’s duration. If it is in the uterus, there are definite signs which every woman ought to be taught to understand. And here, to go back to the matter of cure, even if the discovery isn’t made until cancer has actually developed, there is an excellent chance in the early stages. Cancer of the stomach used to be sure doom to a hideous death. Now, taking the cases as they come, the desperate chances with the early cases, more than a quarter are saved in the best surgical hospitals. Where the growth is in the womb or the intestines, with reasonably early discovery, a generous half should be repaired and returned to active life as good as new.” “That doesn’t seem possible,” said Mrs. Sharpless flatly. “Simply because you’ve been steeped in the fatalism which surrounds cancer. That fatalism, which is so hard to combat, is what keeps women from the saving hope of the knife. ‘I’ve got to die anyway,’ they say, ‘and I’m not going to be carved up before I die.’ And so they throw away what chance they have. Oh, if only I had control of the newspapers of this city for one day a week or a month,—just for a half-column editorial,—what a saving of life I could effect! A little simple advice in straight-out terms would teach the people of this community to avoid poor Mrs. Westerly’s fate.” “And drive ‘em all into the hands of the doctors,” said Mrs. Sharpless shrewdly. “A fine fattening of fees for your trade, young man.”