In the United States more than 100,000 persons die annually from malignant disease. The death rate for cancer throughout the country per hundred thousand of population was 63 in 1900 and 96 in 1929, an increase of 52 per cent. Cancer ranked sixth as the cause of death in 1900 and rose to second place in 1930. At the twenty-second annual clinical congress of the American College of Surgeons, held at St. Louis in October, 1932, a symposium was presented on the curability of cancer. Crile1reported that 4,059 patients seen at the Cleveland Clinic prior to 1928 had been traced. Of 726 patients seen with carcinoma of the stomach, thirteen survived operation three years and seven a period of five years; that is, a survival of 2.7 per cent of all patients seen. Of 841 cases of malignant tumors of the colon and rectum seen, eighty-nine patients survived