The Increase of Cancer

Extract

In applying this title to the following remarks, I am quite aware of the fact that a number of authorities, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, will at once pronounce it a misnomer, for the reason that, while all statistical returns disclose an increase in the rate of mortality from cancer, such increase is held to be only apparent, and is not real, but is due to improved methods of diagnosis. This view was propounded and ably advocated in a paper by Mr. Geo. King, F.I.A., and Dr. Newsholme, printed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. liv, 1893. The position taken up in that paper was that, as cancer is a disease of middle life and old age, no satisfactory conclusion could be reached, except by a distribution of the living and the recorded deaths from cancer into the various age periods. The gentlemen named proceeded with their investigation on this basis, and arrived at the conclusion that no actual increase in the death rate from cancer had taken place, but that the apparent increase was due to improved methods of diagnosis and to erroneous methods of tabulating the data.