RECENT advances in surgical techniques. have resulted in marked reduction in the morbidity and mortality following surgery for chronic cholecystitis and cholelithiasis. In many clinics the mortality has been reduced below 0.5%. However, one complication still portends an eventual mortality approaching 100%, namely cancer of the gall bladder. The recent simultaneous appearance of three such cases has lead to this review, including the 52 operative cases of carcinoma of the gall bladder encountered at the BethEl Hospital in the past 20 years. INCIDENCE The earliest descriptions of cancer of the gall bladder were by Stoll, in 1777,88and by Halle, in 1786.* Since then, over 2,000 cases have been reported, 1,700 of which were reviewed in surveying the more recent literature. According to the United States Bureau of the Census, more than 10,000 of 150,000 annual cancer deaths are due to cancer of the liver and biliary passages. Cancer