CANCER OF THE BREAST
The presence of so many laymen to-night would seem to make it necessary to emphasize the need to attack all lesions that are potentially malignant and remove them at a time when their hosts can safely, certainly, and quickly be cured.
Abstract
Cancer of the mammary gland is second in frequency only to carcinoma of the stomach. When a clinical diagnosis of it can be made with reasonable certainty it is oftentimes too late for a radical cure to be effected, because it has ceased to be a strictly local condition, as are all such lesions in their incipiency, but instead, has, through metastases, become a general and therefore necessarily lethal disease. A late diagnosis cannot be atoned for by a more extensive operation, as operative measures have already been carried to the farthest possible limit. Therefore our best endeavors should be enlisted in the direction of earlier diagnoses, or, better still, we should attack all lesions that are potentially malignant and remove them at a time when their hosts can safely, certainly, and quickly be cured. The presence of so many laymen to-night would seem to make it necessary to emphasize