ulcer becomes of considerable size, and assumes a frightful
aspect. The patient becomes dejected in his spirits, his countenance
is sallow and woe worn, his appetite fails, his days and nights are
full of sorrow and pain, the disease still progresses, till, finally,
death comes to the aid of the unhappy sufferer, and closes the scene
of anguish and misery.

Such is the progress of this appalling malady. It commences apparently
in a trifling way, it terminates in destruction of life.

I have said that the patients' spirits are usually dejected in this
disease, and I wish this to be particularly noticed, as it points out
how cautious a medical man ought to be in stating positively to the
sufferer the real nature of his complaint. The mind is so depressed by
the disease, that the simple communication of the fact to the patient
often produces such a shock to the feelings as he rarely recovers
from; indeed, it often accelerates the death of the patient, and such
being the case, I am quite certain that no man of experience,
judgment, or common sense, would ever commit himself so seriously.
Whenever it is done, it is usually committed by some daring
unprincipled empiric, who often finds it to his interest to pronounce
a case cancerous when in 99 cases out of 100 it is really not so. Now,
with respect to the cure of cancer, I can confidently assert, that
when the disease is really cancer, when it occurs as a constitutional
disease, (as it almost always does) and when it is perfectly
developed, no known remedy is in existence which has the power of
destroying it. It sets even the knife at defiance, for I have
repeatedly seen that when the disease has been scientifically
extirpated, it either returns to the same part, or to the
neighbourhood of the same part, and in such cases the disease has
generally proceeded in its second attack with extraordinary rapidity.
I am strengthened in this assertion by the observations of Professor
Monro--he says, "_Of nearly sixty cancers which I have been present at
the extirpation of, only four patients remained free of the disease
for two years. Three of these lucky people had occult cancers in the
breast, and the fourth had an ulcerated cancer of the lip. The disease
does not always return to the part where the former tumour was taken
away, but more frequently in the neighbourhood, and sometimes at a
considerable distance. Upon a relapse, the disease in those I saw was
more violent, and made