Now it must be acknowledged that we are yet in the dark regarding the exact or precise blood changes which precede and accompany cancer; but in our last and also in previous lectures we saw that the blood did exhibit changes which were evidently connected with the production and continuance of the disease. Until all these matters which have been referred to have been accurately determined by laboratory work and investigation we are forced, as in time past, and as is still the case also in regard to many diseases at the present time, to rest our judgment and treatment on clinical experience, joined with deductive observation, based on such knowledge as we have. And this we have endeavored to do in these and former lectures.
Coming down, then, to the actual and practical facts relating to the dietary and medical treatment of cancer, we readily see that the real cancer problem relates to placing the patient in such a normal or ideal state of life that the function of nutrition is performed in an exactly proper manner, as nature intended, and from which man has erred through the manifold temptations incident to our artificial existence, in the presence of our so-called advanced civilization; for we have seen that all over the world cancer has steadily increased with the intensity of human progress.
Since first writing on the subject under discussion medical reviewers have spoken as though I regarded the eating of meat as the sole cause of cancer, and enforced absence therefrom as the single element in its cure and prevention. From what I have just said you can see that this is by no means true. But that I regard animal protein as a fertile cause of the derangement of metabolism which leads up to and fosters the growth of cancer, is most certainly true; this I have developed largely in my lectures two years ago. While there are many elements which contribute to the deranged blood stream of cancer, the question of diet is so preeminently important that we must treat of it very fully. For, as in gout the continuance of an indulgence in Port and Madeira wine in excess would invalidate any attempt to cure the trouble permanently, so in cancer an excess of animal, or even a large amount of vegetable protein, militates against any effort to remove the disease medically; this is probably true also of coffee and alcohol.
