(See front cover)
Mankind's three most implacable enemies are Heart Disease, Pneumonia, Cancer. And the most baffling of these is Cancer, which is rapidly overtaking the other two for the rank of World's Worst Disease. Mankind's war of defense on Cancer has only recently begun. Last week was marked by five notable maneuvers in that war.
Book. The Annals of Surgery appeared last week with every one of its 54 articles devoted to discussion of Cancer.
The authors were the 54 foremost cancer combatants, the world's leading specialists in cancer pathology, biology, surgery, X-ray therapy, radium therapy. They wrote in tribute to a great teacher, Professor James Ewing of Cornell Medical School, Manhattan, the man who spent ten years writing Neoplastic Diseases, prime textbook on Cancer. What the 54 authorities wrote comprises a compendium of all current knowledge of Cancer, its causes, treatment, prevention. Because Professor Ewing has always taught that the specialists must depend on the family doctor to discover early signs of cancer, this issue of the Annals of Surgery will be republished at the end of this month as a book, Cancer.* Editor of the book is Dr. Frank Earl Adair, 43, Ewing disciple, attending surgeon at Manhattan's Memorial Hospital for the Treatment of Cancel? and Allied Diseases. Dr. Adair is also coauthor of a chapter in the book, on treating skin cancer with mustard gas.
Journal. Last week, too, appeared the first issue of The American Journal of Cancer, a thick quarterly which supersedes The Journal of Cancer Research begun in 1916 by the American Association for Cancer Research. Continuing editor is Dr. Francis Carter Wood, director of Columbia University's Institute of Cancer Research. The Chemical Foundation supplied the money for the new publication. Its purpose is reporting current work on the cancer problem—its research, clinical, educational and public health aspects. One-third of each issue will contain abstracts of reports published in U. S. and foreign journals.
Cinema. Also last week, 60 surgical pathologists assembled at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for a postgraduate course on Cancer. Professor Joseph Colt Bloodgood taught them how to distinguish cancer growths by showing them representative specimens from among his 45,000 microscopic slides. Only a few were allowed to see the first moving pictures taken of cancer cells growing under glass. Cell growers and picture-takers were Mr. & Mrs. George Otto Gey of Pittsburgh, working at Johns Hopkins' Garvan Cancer Research Laboratory, which the Chemical Foundation and Mr. & Mrs. Francis Patrick Garvan finance.
Conference. First formal presentation of the Johns Hopkins cancer film was to be this week at the National Institute of Health, Washington, before a Cancer conference summoned by Surgeon General Hugh Smith Cumming of the U. S. Public Health Service.