Some Practical Aspects of Cancer Prevention

Abstract

IN 1926 Ewing, in an article on "Cancer Prevention," wrote that "though a great body of clinical information shows that many forms of cancer are due to preventable causes, there has been little systematic research to impress this fact on the medical profession or to convey it to the public."¹ This was true then, as it is today, even though the history of environmental cancer, — and thus of cancer prevention, — dates back as far as 1775 to Pott's observation on the high incidence of scrotal cancer among chimney sweeps.² After Pott's observation many decades passed before further statements . . .