Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/105

Rh appear on and beneath the skin, and which may at times very closely simulate cancer, if such a one is not more likely to recognize and treat the disease successfully than one who takes the single disease cancer for treatment without being acquainted with other apparently similar affections? If the dermatologist is not competent to care for cancer, under whose province does it specially fall? It must be remembered that there is nothing peculiar in the treatment of cancer, and that there is perhaps no regular physician in this country who can be said to stand distinctly pre-eminent in the knowledge of its nature and treatment: it is the quacks who are mainly known in connection with cancer.

Cancer is described and treated of in the books on diseases of the skin, and is constantly exhibited and lectured upon in the public clinics on diseases of the skin. In many instances cancer attacks the skin alone, and in many more instances it appears first on or just beneath the skin, and afterward affects other organs. The cases of skin-cancer, which are often terribly destructive, constantly fall under the care of the dermatologist, and are most frequently sent to him in consultation and for treatment by other physicians.

By the union of cancer with skin-diseases in the same institution, many persons may be led to seek relief long before the case would be recognized as cancer either by the patient or by many physicians; and thus the disease may often be arrested very early in its course, when wrong and harmful treatment or neglect may allow the disease to spread until it is too late to hope for any permanently good results from treatment. Of this many cases in proof could be cited.

Many individuals would be inclined to go to an institution which treats skin-diseases in conjunction with cancer, when they would be unwilling to admit that they had cancer; as a rule, the disease is kept secret as long as possible. There would also be less fear of a surgical operation connected with such an institution than in one specially devoted to cancer alone. It often happens that patients who are afflicted with true cancer refuse to have a surgical operation performed, either at all, or until, after long suffering, they are led to it as a last resort, when it is too late. Such patients will often submit to treatment by caustics, which in certain cases yield most excellent results. In skin-cancer the method by caustics is often to be preferred to operations by the knife, the results being rather more sure, and the scar often much less disfiguring. Such cases certainly are best cared for by the dermatologist, who daily has to do with applications soothing or caustic to the skin.

If the future offers any hope for the real cure or prevention of cancer, is it not in the way of careful and patiently conducted experiments with diet, drugs, etc.? Who is better fitted for the study of cancer as a disease than the dermatologist, who has devoted his attention to the study and management of the system as influenced by such