The Size of Operable Cancers: (A Study of 7179 Specimens)

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Abstract
My particular interest in the size of operable cancers has been stimulated by the impression that the medical profession is not making notable progress in the recognition of the early stages of cancer. Sufficient time has already elapsed since the beginning of extensive “cancer campaigns” by our leading medical organizations for the results to become apparent. In 1917 I began the routine measurement of all resected or excised cancers from all parts of the body; in this presentation I shall show the results only in cancers of the breast, stomach, and large intestine. I have chosen the breast because special attention has been given to that organ for over thirty years by the medical profession; radical surgery has long been the practice in treating this, the most visible and palpable harborer of cancer. The stomach, the most common site of this disease, has only recently come within the realm of modern methods of diagnosis and standardized surgery; the large intestine is an organ or series of organs even more recently approached by modern methods. Of all of these organs, the breast and rectum are the most accessible to unaided clinical examination; the stomach and the large intestine, with the exception of the rectum, require the assistance of expert and highly technical roentgenology. There may be some reason for failure to recognize early cancers in the cecum, ascending, transverse, and descending colon, the sigmoid, splenic, and hepatic flexures, and perhaps in the stomach, but very little excuse in the breast and rectum.

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