“Well, I don’t want anybody to open up my stomach just to see what is inside it!” declared Mrs. Sharpless vigorously. “Very likely not. Perhaps you’d feel different if you’d had steady pain or indigestion for two or three years.” “Does that mean cancer?” asked a tall, sallow woman anxiously. “Not by any means necessarily. But it may well mean gastric ulcer, and that may develop into cancer. Three fourths of the cases of carcinoma of the stomach which come into the surgeon’s hands have developed from gastric ulcer.” “Is there no cure but the knife?” inquired Mrs. Clyde. “Not for the cancer. For the gastric ulcer, yes. Careful medical care and diet often cure it. The trouble is that patients insist on diet and drugs in cases where they have proved themselves ineffectual. Those cases should come to the surgeon. But it will take long to educate the public to the significance of long-continued abdominal pain or indigestion. The knife is the last thing they are willing to think of.” “But stomach operations are terribly dangerous, aren’t they?” inquired a member. “Not any more. They were once. The operation for gastric ulcer in the early stage is simple. Even developed cancer of the stomach can be cured by the knife in from twenty-five to thirty per cent of the cases. Without the knife, it is sure death. I’m glad we got to the stomach first, because that is the most obscure and least hopeful of the common locations of the growth. In carcinoma of the breast, the most prevalent form among women, there is one simple, inclusive rule of prevention and cure. Any lump in the breast should be regarded, as Blood-good of Johns Hopkins puts it, ‘as an acute disease.’ It should come out immediately. If such growths come at once to the surgeon, prevention and cure together would save probably ninety per cent of those who now die from this ‘creeping death,’ as our parents called it. “Now, I’ll ask you to imagine for the moment that I am conducting a clinic, for I’m not going to mince words in speaking of cancer of the womb, the next commonest form. Any persistent irritation there is a peril. If there is a slight, steady, and untimely discharge, that’s a danger signal. The woman should at once have a microscopical examination made. This is simple, almost painless, and practically a sure determination of whether there is cancer or not. The thing to do is to find out.” “But if it is cancer, is there any chance?” asked the lady of the hatpin. “Would you regard tuberculosis as hopeless?” “Of course not.”