Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

HOW THE UNSKILLFUL REMOVAL OF A JVEOLE MAY CAUSE CANCER. The Hap-hazard Practitioner Examinee the Mole She Thlnka Spoils Her Beauty. With the Electric Needle He Burn* the I She Regards Her New “Unblemished” Mole All Away as He | '’’ace with Happiness, Her Thinks. Vanity Appeased. But Mlcrosoplc Portions of the Mole Each of the Irritated Portions Left Is a Have Been Left Behind and s Potential Cancer and Often Be- Inflammation Begins. j comes Positive. At Last, at the Skilled Practitioner’s^ Hands, an Operation Is Necessary and Beauty Goes Forever. Medical Science Ascribes the Increasing .Prevalence of the Disease Among Women to Their Increased Devotion to Foolish Fashions and Their Desire to Be More “Beautiful” Than Nature Intended Them to Be By John B. Huber, M. D. W C are going, In this article, to con sider the latest medical discov eries establishing the vanity ol women as one ot the most prolific i causes of cancer. There Is the vanity tha tleads her to have moles, warts and superfluous hair removed from her face by other than skilful surgeons and which leads, In a way to be made plain, to cancer of the face. I There Is the vanity that leads her to tight-fitting shoes which, through the strain upon the leg muscles, leads to the displacement and Irritation of abdominal organs and oftentimes cancer having Its cause In the displacement and Irritation. There Is the vanity of too tight-fitting corsets that leads to cancer of the breast. | There Is the vanity of the«high, tight- fitting collars that by pressing upon the neck glands often cause them to become cancerous. There Is the vanity of the pince-nez that leads to cancer of the nose when the more homely but comfortable spec tacles would not. There is. finally, the vanity of poison ous cosmetics, to which cancers of the lips have recently been traced. Tc these vanities, which have grown amazingly upon women both old and young within the last few years, must be ascribed the astounding increase In cancer cases that the medical journals report. In order that the matter, so Im portant to women, may be thoroughly understood by them, I will begin with a general consideration of the established facts about cancer as we know them up to the moment. We, most of us, know by now what a dreadful disease cancer Is: that It comes after only consumption and pneumonia on our mortality lists; that one in every eight of our women, and one in every eleven of our men dtes of It; that women suffer more than men, because the dis ease attacks In women the tissues and organs peculiar to their sex: that, ex- icept as will lie stated, the majority of Its victims are between thirty and old age, dying mostly between forty-five and sixty-five; that there are eighty thousand rancer deaths annually in our country; that when the disease Is fully established, when the crab—for that's what the word cancer means—has fastened its clawB In to the deeper tissues and organs of the body, there is practically no hope of life; that then even the knife is unsuccessful, because for success and cure not only the body of the cancer (which forms the malignant tumor) but also every one of Us offshoots, its claws, must be removed, and that if any one of these claws has Invaded parts remote from the main can cerous growth, parts which the surgeon cannot reach, the cure cannot be assured. If any such cancerous material re mains there will, with very few excep tions, be recurrences months or years afterward, -with practically no hope of permanent or positive cure in the pres ent state of medical knowledge and ex- 8 perience. I know that every now and then we get reports of complete cures by means other than the knife—drugs, chemicals, serums, vaccines, arsenic, radium and so on. But it is the solemnest duty of the re sponsible physician, in view of the grav ity of the cancer situation, to warn the people that none of these means has yet been scientifically proven; nor have any of them stood the necessary tests of time and of exhaustive in vestigation by the colleges and the physicians who have advanced them Cancer is indeed curable by the knife in many cases. What is the percentage of such curse? Illustrious sur geons have demonstrated eighty per cent of cures— when the disease has been taken in time. Operation not early and with extension, that is, by the lymph and blood channels to other parts of the body than the original seat of the disease, has given fifty per cent of cures. But when complete removal is not possible there will be recurrences and no absolute cure. What is then to be done? The wisest thing is to realize the nature of the “pre- cancerous" stage, that is to say, the condition of the body when it is predisposed, -when it is easy for cancer to develop in the body. It is by recognizing this pre- cancerous stage in time that forty thousand precious lives can annually be saved in the United States from this most dreadful malady. Practically all cancers have a pre-cancerous stage that ought to have been detected, and would most likely have been detected if people had gone to their doc tors as soon as they were noticed. '‘Be nign” tumors, not in themselves danger ous to life; lumps, prolonged irritation, disturbance of function through years; chronic ulceration, as of the stomach: in flammations. injuries; scars and stumps from old operations; such are conditions Which must be feared as leading to can cer. Cancer is always a tumor, a swelling, a “lump." as many people say. But to the doctor any kind of sw-elling — and there are at least a score of them—is a tumor, not necessarily cancerous. Also there are several kinds of cancer, differ ing in the degree of their malignancy and in their course. Superficial cancers. «s those of the lip or other parts of the face, are reasonably recognizable by sight and touch and by a microscopic examination. Immediately such a thing appears medical examination must be had. Of course such things may not be cancerous. And if they are not. the best medical advice should be secured as to what should be done with them. Deep- seated cancers are much more difficult to detect; oftentimes the only indication of them is a functional disturbance of the Diagram Snowing How High Heels Strain the Leg Muscles Produc ing Strains Upon the Abdominal Organs, and the Same Muscles in Normal Position. organ or tissue involved or perhaps, also of other and associated organs. There fore those after forty, especially women, and certainly those after forty who find their health not as it should be. or had been, should go without delay for a medi cal examination. Irritation, prolonged through months and years, all too often leads to a cancer at the site of the irritation. Thus there is the clay pipe cancer; there used to be the chimney sweeps cancer; there is that of the tongue from the jagged end of an untreated tooth; the laryngeal cancer, from the inveterate smoking of strong tobacco; the cancer from X-ray burns (how long the list of medical martyrs who have suffered thus); the cancer from prolonged exposure to the sun; that from insect bites or intestinal parasites; that from betel-nut chewing in India; from eating very hot rice, in China; the kankri cancer in Thibet. (The natives carry In their tunic a pocket stove, the kankri, the constant use of which is followed by cancer at the site of the burn.) Prolonged disturbance of function not amenable to ordinary treatment should excite suspicion that has imperatively to be dissipated; especially is' this so of the digestive apparatus. Function and struc- *The habit of treating moles or warts with a caustic pencil produces, through irritation, a cancerous growth.” ture are as inseparable as mind and mat ter; abnormal functioning must inevit ably lead to diseased structure. Anemia nausea, indigestion, loss of appetite, of w-eight, strength and stamina, jaundice, bleeding from the stomach or other or gans, uneasiness, pain and tenderness on pressure below the breastplate—such things should excite apprehension that has to be removed. Gastric pain has been considered to indicate cancer, and its absence to remove the occasion of fear. But here were a broken reed to rely on, for even advanced cancers have given no pain. These warnings must be emphasized for men after forty who have been alco holics or habitual eaters of irritating, in digestible and superabundant food. And the most heartrending cancer cases are those of women who have neglected the warnings given by discomfort and func tional disturbance. Now, what we want especially to em phasize is, that most cancers are the re sult of a pre-cancerous state plus irri tation—local irritation, either very severe and all at once, acute; or constant, chronic Irritation, ^nduring through fears. And I want to dwell here on how- can cers come about through injudicious hand ling, in beauty parlors and by inexpert beauty doctors, who are often as ignorant, perhaps more so,! of the na ture of cancer aid of the dangers they are menacing their patrons with as are those patrons themselves, of the nature of cancer—of handling by such men of moles, birth marks, warty growths and so on. I am going to show how such handling has oftentimes resulted in fatal cancer; how the mournful history of that disease eems with cases begun in those parlors. Who has not known that moles which do not feel sore or tender and give no physical trouble should be left severely alone, because of the danger of cancer from irritating them or unskillfully try ing to remove them? And yet, women, imagining these moles to be disfiguring and unsightly, will not rest till they have them removed, and by men as fit for the work as they are to talk Sanskrit. Nor am I here a blind defender of my own profession. There are graduated, licensed doctors who have not had the sense to let alone harmless birth marks, who have operated so unskillfully that they have not removed all of the warty growth, whose interfering operation has served only to irritate the tissues and the skin at the site of the operation, and to incite the part they did not remove, to cancer growth. A diagram accompanies this writing which shows very well what I mean. You see what growth has been removed— mostly but not all: the inexpert or ig norant operator has removed such of the growth as was visible to his naked eye. But note also, how he did not remove that microscopic remainder, which nas played the part of the flame to light up the dreadful disease. Of course it is well for moles and the like, which have .been irritated, to be re moved. In fact any sore that will not heal rapidly; or any wart or mole that suddenly begins to grow rapidly; or any growth that shows swelling, inflamma tion and redness and is painful has got to be attended to. But only by doctors and surgeons of tried skill and experi ence. And any mole or other growth, especially on the face and neck, that is reposing peacefully in or on the skin and gives no indication of irritatior* or in- flamation had far best be' left alone. Moles, as they appear on the cheeks, eyelids or neck, are of various kinds. There is the port wine mole, flat, not raised from the surface. Such a mole, even if it be considerable in area, Is not at all unsightly Then there are those birth marks which doctors call angiomas—that is, blood vessel moles through which tiny blood vessels course, as pretty, if you will only look at them aright, as the markings In a rose leaf. And there are black or red moles, raised from the face, varying from smooth to rough and warty in ap pearance; and then there are the hairy, moles. It is these raised, warty and hairy moles that are the most dange-iurf to irritate or to operate on. Wha{ means does the beauty doctor employ to “beautify” his foolish clients? He may do electrolysis, that is, drive needles into the mole and then send an electric current down through those needles, thus destroying perhaps the larger part of the growth, which then sloughs off, but almost never the whole. What he has done, then, has been to leave an unsightly scar and to have irri tated and inflamed the tissues that were before his fell work giving no trouble,j cancer be likely to develop, not in weeks, perhaps, not in months, but all too often in a year or two. Or the beauty doctor mav elect to use carbon dioxide snow or perhaps liquid air (at the temperaturt of 130 degrees below the freezing point), and if his treatment has not resulted in a hideous scar, it has left as unsightly an area of parchment skin not nearly, to say the least, as becoming as the mole was. And being like as not unskillful, not knowing how long to apply tht agent, or the amount of pressure to exert—what cruel cancer development has not gone on un der that surface, in the seat of that ope ration! Or the beauty doctor may “try his ‘prentice hand” with the X-rays or with radium, regarding which practise I may as well admit that, even in the practise of able surgeons, undue exposure to , these agencies have been the forerunner* of all too many cancer deaths. Then there is that saddest of all femi nine maladies—cancer of the breast. What surgeon of practice could not tell cases the most melancholy in all the history of his profession, of operations involving fearful mutilations, and then all too ineffective—the narrative of which must be spared the reader. How often is the tight fitting, irritating corset respon sible for such cancers. And how many an internal cancer, of the liver, the stomach, of the organs peculiar to women, is due to such insensate friction. Another vagary of fashion is the boned collar, which is certainly irritating to the eye of human masculinity, but far more so to the necks of the wearers, with pos- t t Aible dire consequences, such as we have 1 dwelt on. And high-heeled, tight shoes. There are medical records of cases of cancer of the foot following blood blisters caused by tight footwear. ' ♦ And those pince-nez. Cases of cancer have resulted from the irritation thus caused. Fashion again, and yet what can be more comely than the snug-fitting spectacles our mothers used to wear? But the things our mothers used to wear and do are not suitable to tbeir daughters. Is here to be found the reason for our enormously increased cancer mortality among women? Is here the reason why, while all parts of the body have shared in the cancer increase, the rate for skin cancer has been much higher than for the internal organs? Is this the reason why there has been a 50 per cent increase in the mortality from skin cancer in the last ten years? Is this the reason why, although I have stated that cancer has been a disease of middle# life, a great many jancers are now found In women as young as eighteen years? A Read Your Children’s Character in Their Lead Pencils YOUNG child is just a bundle of uncorrelated forces, nothing more, nothing less, and the one who expects little children to act as sages or saints is apt to receive a severe shock at times. For, in addition to "trailing clouds of glory,” the child brings with him the' uncut stones and the unhewn timbers, which in days to come may be built into a splendid tem ple of character—or the reverse. And no person has such an opportun ity of studying the child in relation to Copyright, IS 1a, fcv tk* Biahta B»- •* his different traits, as the school teacher. If teachers are in the least observant, they can determine just what sort of man or woman the boy or girl will be come, by watching this picture play daily unreeled before them, whether in the way they do their work in the school room, or play their games in the school yard. But in no way does the child reveal his traits more than in the way he sharpens his lead pencil. Here is seen whether he is impulsive, destructive, wasteful, impatient, criminal or easy go ing; artistic, considerate, economical, thoughtful or carefuL The child who gouges out great pieces from the sides of his pencil, shofrs im pulsiveness and generosity. If he breaks off a chunk with his finger nails, he shows destructiveness and an utter dis regard of the feelings and rights ot others. Should he smooth his pencil down to a long point, he shows an artis tic temperament and a considerate dis position. If he cuts his pencil off in a stub, he shows economy, carefulness and quickness. In fact, the way children sharpen their pencils is a very clear indication of what sort of men and women they are likely to be. V. aai