Abstract
Cancer of the stomach is the most important malignant tumor. Deaths from this disease constitute from one fourth to one third of all deaths due to malignant tumors. Approximately 4 per cent of all adults die from cancer of the stomach. Gastric cancer is not a disease of senility, although it occurs especially after the thirty-fifth year. And that is the reason why the systematic fight against this frequent disease looms as one of the most important tasks of the medical profession. The attitude concerning the prognosis of this fight seems to have changed. Physicians of the older generation were thoroughly pessimistic, and usually still are pessimistic. Although many of them have seen an occasional cure by early surgery, they have observed that the vast majority of all their patients suffering from gastric carcinoma died. Public opinion was likewise pessimistic. Too many cases were known in which surgery had been