Cancer research in Australia / [G. Cooke Adams].

  • Adams, G. Cooke.
Date:
[between 1900 and 1909?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cancer research in Australia / [G. Cooke Adams]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/18 (page 117)
    CANCER RESEARCH IN AUSTRALIA Much has been recently written telling of the steady increase in the mortality from cancer in almost every country. This increase is a matter of the gravest international concern, and I think it will be universally admitted that the attention of states¬ men and the general public as well as the medical profession in all climes should be directed to any facts relating to the cause of the increase, and to any suggestions that may be made for the prevention or diminution of so deplorable a state of affairs. Increase and Mortality. My object then in this article is to endeavour to throw some light on the cause of the increase of cancer and its mortality in Australia, and to give the conclusions I have formed from personal investigation as to certain factors bearing on the cause of the disease, together with suggestions for its prevention which appear to me absolutely necessary in order to check the terrible onslaught of its ravages.* No country presents better opportunities for studying the cause and treatment of cancer than Australia. Being practically a new country it is possible to trace the moral and social conditions of life existing among the inhabitants from the period of the earliest arrivals, as well as to determine which class of the inhabitants—native, British or foreign born—has proved most susceptible to cancer and may be credited with the greatest increase in the disease and its mortality during the last forty years. It was not until 1856 that the first systematic report of deaths from cancer was recorded, when statistics showed a death-rate of 14*0 per 100,000 living. At this period the native born death- rate was practically nil, owing to the fact that very few had arrived at the time of life (nearly middle age) at which cancer principally manifests itself. Therefore, as the British born proportion of the population was at this period over 50 per cent. * An article of mine embracing this subject has been recently published in The Lancet, Feb. 13th and 20th, 1904, to which I would refer readers who may desire to learn fuller particulars of this investigation.