INCREASE OF CANCER IN ENGLAND.
"IN England four and a half times as many people die now from cancer as half a century ago, and no other disease can show anything like such an immense increase," W. Roger Williams says, in the Lancet. "Probably no single factor is more potent in determining the outbreak of cancer in the predisposed than high feeding. There can be no doubt that the greed for food manifested by modern communities is altogether out of proportion to their present requirements. Many indications point to the gluttonous consumption of meat, which is such a characteristic feature of this age, as likely to be especially harmful in this respect. Statistics show that the consumption of meat has for many years been increasing by leaps and bounds, till it now has reached the amazing total of 131 pounds per head per year, which is more than double what it was half a century ago, when the conditions of life were more compatible with high feeding. When excessive quantities of such highly stimulating forms of nutriment are ingested by persons whose cellular metabolism is defective, it seems probable that there may thus be excited in those parts of the body where vital processes are still active, such excessive and disorderly cellular proliferation as may eventuate in cancer. No doubt other factors co-operate, and among these I should be especially inclined to name deficient exercise and probably also deficiency in fresh vegetable food."