The study of the cancer problem attracts all of us. In 1924, more than 50,000 people died from this disease in England and Wales, and the numbers increase yearly by about 1,700. If we could "pluck out the heart of this mystery" (Shakespeare), we would remove one of the three greatest physical scourges of man's frail humanity, leaving him still to struggle, in this "our brittle life," with syphilis and tuberculosis. But while the latter disease is steadily diminishing both in virulence and in frequency, and while increased means of diagnosis and treatment are mitigating the terror of syphilis, yet with cancer we have made little progress in our means of diagnosis, and the surgeon's knife still remains the only certain method of eradication.
Cancer of the larynx is a particularly interesting subject of investigation. First, because certain manifestations of it yield results in the way of lasting cure