Abstract
IN a paper on this subject read before the Danish Medical Society on November 5, 1940 (Nordisk Med., 9, 869; 1941), Dr. Johannes Clemmesen, of Copenhagen, maintains that cancer research has lost contact with practical medicine and that the etiology of the disease is almost exclusively studied in laboratories, while clinical mass observations are far too uncommon. The following results were obtained by him on examination of the mortality from cancer among males in various occupations in Denmark during the period 1935–1939. In agriculture and similar occupations deaths from cancer in the age-group 45–64 were fewer than would be expected from the average of cancer deaths among the population as a whole. In industry the cancer mortality was higher than the average in accordance with the higher mortality from all causes for this group” After the sixty-fifth year the cancer mortality was the same for all occupations, but the localization varied in the different occupational groups. The cancer mortality among males and females in Denmark showed the following characteristics. In the age-groups 25–44 and 45–64 it was highest among females. In the older age-groups it was highest among males, but this excess for males was highest in Copenhagen, less in the provincial towns and not definite in the rural areas. The total cancer mortality was also highest in the capital, probably owing to the lower mortality from that cause in the agricultural than in the industrial group.
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Cancer and Occupation in Denmark. Nature 147, 741 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147741b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147741b0