p. 12 | The Cause of Cancer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 2, 1902

The Cause of Cancer

WHILE the question of the cause of that dread and increasingly prevalent malady—cancer—remains still unsettled, the investigations which are constantly being made with a view to its solution contain much to warn us against the free use of common salt. One of the latest testimonies on this point is mentioned by the London correspondent of the Melbourne Age. He says:—

“The earnest appeal made by the king a short time ago for increased efforts to discover a cure for cancer is producing a variety of strange theories and experiments. A Leeds physician, Dr. Braithwaite, has just advanced the startling suggestion that the common salt which we all use so freely in our different foods is one of the leading causes of the terrible disease. He puts his theory this way. Salt, he says, is an essential factor in the origin of cancer, but it is inoperative without at least one, probably two, out of three other factors. These he names as (1) overnourishment, especially from meat; (2) an impure condition of body, owing to the non-use of food eaten, and to an indolent condition of life; and (3) some local irritant, such as would be caused by a blow, or some micro-organism. The idea came to Dr. Braithwaite from noticing that cancer is seldom met with among the Jewesses who are treated in the women’s department of the Leeds infirmary. The difference of diet as between Jews and Gentiles is the absence of bacon and ham from the diet of the former; and as, according to Professor MacFadyean, principal of the Royal Veterinary College, the pig is the only domestic animal in which no case of cancer has been met with, it must be the salt, not the flesh of the animal, which is to blame. Jews also eat less butchers’ meat and more of fowl and fish. The late medical officer of the Jewish Hospital for Incurables says he has never seen a case of cancer among Jews. Other points mentioned by Dr. Braithwaite in support of his theory are as follows: Savages, as far as is known, never suffer from cancer. They get no salt. All domestic animals except the pig are subject to cancer, and salt is given to sheep, cows, and horses, but never to pigs. Wild carnivora with a pure meat diet are exempt. On the other hand, when confined to zoological gardens, they are given salt, and become subject to cancer. Another doctor points out that men in the merchant service suffer from cancer considerably above the average of outdoor workers. Out of every one thousand deaths of men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five cancer is responsible for forty-seven. These men are large eaters of salt meat.”

There are many strong objections to a meat diet, and one of them is that such a diet is naturally conducive to the use of a large amount of salt.

The true remedy for cancer is undoubtedly to be found in a reform of diet. People, however, do not want to reform their diet; they want to continue eating as before, and then have something discovered that will nullify in their systems their transgression of natural law. But nature does not work on this plan; which is to say that the Creator has made no provision for immunity to the transgressor of his laws. He has no plan but that men shall live rightly; and if men will not do this, then there is nothing left for them but to discover that the law is inexorable which declares, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”