The Mortality from Cancer in the Western Hemisphere

Abstract

The progress of society is largely measured by the more or less effective prevention of poverty, sickness, and premature death. Within a single generation a veritable revolution has been achieved in the control of many important diseases, and some of the most destructive plagues of mankind have been successfully eliminated, or materially reduced in frequency, in the principal civilized countries of the world. Foremost, in the order of importance, are the diseases attributable to infection or contagion, and in many important countries plague, cholera, yellow fever, leprosy, smallpox, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis, as well as most of the acute infectious diseases of infancy, are now measurably and effectively under sanitary control. By way of illustration, attention may be directed to the balance of mortality for four large American cities for which the data are available in a fairly trustworthy form for the last fifty years. The cities considered are New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and the data may be relied upon as fairly representative for at least the urban centers of population of the country at large. DECLINE IN THE DEATH KATE In the four cities under consideration Asiatic cholera and yellow fever have been practically eliminated. Smallpox has been reduced from a former rate of 39.5 to a present rate of only 2.4 per 100,000 of population. Scarlet fever, diphtheria and croup, typhoid fever, and pulmonary tuberculosis, as well as the diseases of the stomach and intestines, have materially decreased during the last quarter-century, compared with the twenty-five years preceding the year 1889. The most significant exception to a general decline in the death rate is the increasing mortality from cancer. In the four cities under consideration the cancer death rate has increased from 46.4 to 72.1 per 100,000 of population. In other words, there has been an actual increase in the rate of 25.7 per 100,000 of population, equivalent to a quarter-century increase in the rate of 55.4 per cent.