It is not my purpose tonight, nor is it within my ability, to sift the newer ideas on cancer of the female genitals and pool individual concepts so as to produce a compact treatment package for 1957. I merely will endeavor as Director of one of the Ontario Cancer Foundation's eight clinics to portray our own Clinic's reaction to certain modern trends in both diagnosis and therapy, and this I do in modesty, being fully cognizant of the original and superb leadership many members of this Society have given through the years.I am not clear whether it was Cleaves or Abbé, both of New York, who first inserted radium into the cervix with malignancy, but the initiative of Dr. Howard A. Kelly certainly revealed that radium was an effective alternative to the Wertheim operation. It was he who in later years urged irradiation for the fibroid uterus. During my residency with him in 1030, I sensed a feeling of conservatism for well do I recall his saying, “Doctor, perhaps I did more than anyone else in the country to advance the operation of uterine suspension, and probably it was the worst thing I ever did.” It was during that year that a goodly number of Tom Cullen's patients with recurrences after the Wertheim operation were referred for radium. Is it not very natural that I, too, from that memorable association, leaned toward irradiation and conservatism? In fact, those years implanted into my professional system a seed which ultimately germinated into a basic principle that dominates the thinking of our London Cancer Clinic today, “Do a minimum that is compatible with diagnosis and cure”; and yet, with expanding radiotherapy and extended surgery the ever-tantalizing decision which confronts us is, just what is that minimum?For purposes of discussion permit me to cite and weave into the context of this thesis five major developments since 1930, which have appreciably altered our attitude and actions toward gynecological cancer: exfoliative cytology, a system of radium dosage, supervoltage, supersurgery, and the isotopes.