. | 20 | 24 | 39 |
| Russia and Poland .. | 26 | 30 | 26 |
| England and Wales .. | 79 | 77 | 80 |
| Ireland .. .. | 90 | 82 | 86 |
---------------------------------------------------------------

How are these facts to be explained? What is there about the habits,
the environment, the dietetic peculiarities of the Italians in
America, which tends to confer upon them a greater immunity from
cancer than is possessed by those whose maternal ancestry goes to
England or Ireland? Assuredly this immunity is not due to chance. It
is governed by some law, even though that law be unrecognized to-day.
If the low cancer mortality of Italy made itself manifest only in that
country, we might suspect it indicated a lack of skilled diagnosis;
but here we find it just as prominent in three different section of
the United States. Not only that, but the difference is seen in
comparison of parts affected by cancer. For persons whose mothers
were born in Ireland the death-rate in cancer of the stomach per
million population was 184; the corresponding rate for Italians was
56.

Does the poverty of the people have anything to do with proclivity to
cancer? In one way this is a probability. If we could compare the
general prosperity of men and women whose parents were born in the
United States with the entire population of which the parents were
born in other countries, it seems to me that we should find the second
class, taken as a whole, to be financially less prosperous than the
first. Now, in 1900, the census reveals that in the United States the
class to suffer chiefly from malignant diseasewas that which included
THE FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION, alike in cities, in rural districts,
within or without the registration area. This is certainly a fact of
tremendous import. In America the population is a blend of every
European nationality. Why, taken as a whole, should the native
American suffer from one mysterious disease less than some of those
who have come more recently to the United States?

In another work I have ventured to suggest that if we are to discover
the cause of cancer, we must study the habits and customs of those
still living who have become the victims of some form of this
mysterious disease. A theory held by some is that cancer is due to
the consumption of meat. If one means that the flesh of perfectly
healthy anima