more striking illustration, both of the dangerousness
of "a little knowledge" and of the absurdity of applying rigid logic to
premises which contain a large percentage of error. Too blind a
confidence in the inerrancy of logic is almost as dangerous as
superstition. Space will not permit us to enter into details, but
suffice it to say:--

First, that expert statisticians are in grave doubt whether this
increase is real or only apparent, due to more accurate diagnosis and
more complete recording of all cases occurring. Certainly a large
proportion of it is due to the gross imperfection of our records thirty
years ago.

Second, that the apparent increase is little greater than that of deaths
due to other diseases of later life, such as nervous, kidney, and heart
diseases. Our heaviest saving of life so far is in the first five-year
period, and more children are surviving to reach the cancer and Bright's
disease age.

Third, that a disease, eighty per cent of whose death-rate occurs after
forty-five years of age, is scarcely likely to threaten the continued
existence of the race.

The nature of the process is a revolt of a group of cells. The cause of
it is legion, for it embraces any influence which may detach the cell
from its normal surroundings,--"isolate it," as one pathologist
expresses it. The cure is early and complete amputation of not only the
rebellious cells, but of the entire organ or region in which they occur.

A cancer is a biologic anomaly. Everywhere else in the cell-state we
find each organ, each part, strictly subordinated, both in form and
function, to the interests of the whole.

Here this relation is utterly disregarded. In the body-republic, where
we have come to regard harmony and loyalty as the invariable rule, we
find ourselves suddenly confronted by anarchy and revolt.

The process begins in one great class of cells, the epithelium of the
secreting glands. This is a group of cell-citizens of the highest rank,
descended originally from the great primitive skin-sheet, which have
formed themselves into chemical laboratories, ferment-factories for the
production of the various secretions required by the body, from the
simplest watery mucus, as in the mouth, or the mere lubricant, as in the
fat-glands of the hair-follicles, to the most complex gastric or
pancreatic juice. They form one of the most active and important groups
in the body, and their revolt is dangerous in proportion.

The mov