The League of Nations Cancer Inquiry

Abstract

THE death rate from cancers of the breast and uterus in England is much higher than it is in Holland or Italy. The Health Organisation of the League of Nations appointed an international committee, with Sir George Buchanan as chairman, and also a committee of statisticians, presided over by Dr. M. Greenwood, to look into the matter, and the first results have now been published.¹ The greater part of the reports is occupied by elaborate statistical surveys of the available data for England by Dr. Greenwood, for Holland by Dr. H. W. Methorst, and for Italy by Prof. A. Niceforo, and their analysis is directed particularly to the relation of marriage age and place to the incidence of these forms of cancer. The non-technical reader will find the introductory summary easier to follow, and there is room for a still simpler abstract which, with a few diagrams, would deserve wide circulation among medical men.