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Since William Clark (Philadelphia) perfected surgery with the clean-burning electric knife and needle, many surgeons are now using the electric cautery in preference to what Howard Atwood Kelly (Johns Hopkins) in Cancer calls "knife & fork" surgery. The cautery reaches places which the scalpel cannot touch.*
X-rays and radium are potent weapons against the Cancer Ogre. They burn the turbulent, riotous cancer cells to death. But they may also kill healthy cells. Only expert technicians should fight cancer with X-rays or radium. (The same warning applies of course to the scalpel or cautery wielder.†) Research. Although the causes and ra tional treatment of Cancer are undetermined, a vast amount of research on the subject has piled up. Most of it is recent accumulation. First important international conference was held at Lake Mohonk, N. Y. in 1926. The U. S. has nine first-rate research centres, three in Manhattan, one each in Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago. The experimental clinic of Drs.
Coffey & Humber in San Francisco, for which Federal backing was sought by Hearstpapers and ambitious politicians (TIME, Feb. 24 et seq.) is regarded by authorities as an example of the earnest but unfinished independent effort which should be drawn into large, securely financed carefully directed institutions. Professor Ewing thinks the U. S. is far from being properly mobilized for its cancer war. He wants mightier weapons than any now available — six cancer research institutions each endowed with $10,000,000. He would have them scattered across the country, fortresses whither crusaders might rally, whence they might sally.
Homage Volume. There is a code of ethics for a homage volume like Cancer. "The dedicatee should be recognized as an international leader in his field of research. He should be an eminent trainer of scholars, as well as himself an eminent scholar. . . ." By emphasizing the teacher a homage book differs from the Nobel prize in Medicine, which emphasizes the discoverer of medical fundamentals. Professor Ewing is of course both.
Not many men have received such formal homage while they were alive. Among the few are: the late William Osier when he was teaching at Johns Hopkins; Harvey Gushing, Harvard's brain surgeon; the late Abraham Jacobi of Columbia, founder of pediatrics (children's diseases) ; Carl Gustaf A. Forssell, radiologist of Sweden; Albert Sigmund Gustav Döderline, gynecologist of Germany. And now Cancer Man Ewing of Cornell.
The Man. Professor Ewing was 64 Christmas Day. He is a tireless worker, now more important in medicine, especially in the cancer field, than ever before. During the years when he was writing Neoplastic Diseases, he worked holidays, nights and weekends. And all the time he was racked by paroxysms of facial neuralgia.
Dr. Frank Earl Adair, editor of the homage-book, describes his master thus: