Changing Concepts in the Surgery of Cancer

Abstract

"IN estimating the limitations of surgery we find none except they be set by ourselves. How shall they be set? By conservative judgment opposed to rashness." This estimate of "The Future of Surgery without Limit" was made by David W. Cheever¹ in his presidential address to the American Surgical Association before the turn of the century. Sixty-four years later it has a singular applicability to the surgery of cancer.The surgeon of today, as Cheever foresaw, is enabled by virtue of the technical advances of his art to carry out an operation of almost unlimited extent. In dealing with cancer, . . .