SCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY.
The Conquest of Cancer. By Robert Bell, M.D., F.R.F.P.S. (G. Bell and Sons. 3s. 6d.) The Conquest of Cancer. By Robert Bell, M.D., F.R.F.P.S. (G. Bell and Sons. 3s. 6d.)
Dr. Bell claims that cancer is purely the result of auto- texmm ia. The poisons are elaborated in the intestinal tract from the products of our flesh diet and are absorbed into the blood-stream. Cancer is, he claims, entirely preventable and in all but its final stages curable by a wisely regulated vege- tarian diet and a proper attention to the sanitation of the colon. The operative treatment of the disease is in his view criminally unjustifiable. There are two or three weak points in his argument, of which we will call attention to one : He states that at the present time 25,000,000 of the world's population are doomed to die of cancer, whereas fifty years ago the number was 8,000,000. Fifty years ago was the world's diet more vegetarian ; and was constipation less prevalent ? No. If Dr. Bell can, before he closes his career, publish the record of seventy-five cases of complete cure by his treatment from a series of one hundred properly diagnosed cases of " operable ' cancer, he will go down to history as one of the world's greatest benefactors. As it is, his arguments must be received with extreme caution, for his thesis is certainly unproven, and in our present state of knowledge early operative treatment offers the only hope of cure.
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