victims among the poorest and most poverty-stricken
element of every nationality? Does suggestion of inquiry concerning
diet induce a smile? It should not, as long as meat derived from
cancerous animals is permitted by Government authority, to pass
inspection, and to be distributed throughout the world. And no
inquiry concerning cancer can be deemed complete which has not fully
investigated the extent to which this atrocious practice has been
carried on for the past quarter of a century.

But this State-wide inquiry is only a part of the work. Every year,
for a period of at least ten years, the record must be revised, the
result of surgical operations recorded, the deaths enumerated, the new
cases added. The expense of each annual revision would be far less
than that of the original inquiry; but the inquiry will be costly, and
should be costly, if it is to be accurate and complete. Here, indeed,
would be the opportunity for the co-operation of organizations devoted
to "cancer research," and particularly of that new foundation, the
income of which for a single year is far more than the original
investigation would cost.

And when the inquiry is completed; when all attainable information
concerning the occurrence of malignant disease shall have been secured
not for a single year, but for a period of successive years, not for
one community, but for an entire state, and for each of its
constitutuent parts, what then? Then I believe a knowledge of the
cause of cancer will soon be attained. When we know the cause, then
there will be hope for prevention, which is far better than cure. All
the various experiments upon mice, for example, whatever they may
teach concerning the disease in the lower animals, have not
enlightened us concerning the cause of the malady in mankind. The
greatest and most promising fields for scientific research, now almost
untrodden, awaits the explorers of the future. In a world where now
there is comparative unconcern, there may soon be fearful
apprehensions of the increasing prevalence of an almost irremediable
disease. Within the coming century, the investigation I have here
outlined, will sometime be made; and, as a result, the cause of cancer
may be as well known to medical science, as the causes of typhoid
fever or malaria,--mysteries that seemed insoluble less than a century
ago. And I venture with assurance to predict, that some time within
the next fifty years, the Governments of E