“Hopeless from the first,” said old Mrs. Sharpless, with a sigh, to her daughter.

Mrs. Clyde nodded. “I suppose so. And she has so much to live for, too.”

“What’s this that’s hopeless from the first?” asked the Health Master, looking up from the novel which he was enjoying in what he called his “lazy hour,” after luncheon.

“Mrs. Westerly’s case,” said the younger woman. “Even now that she’s gone to the hospital, the family won’t admit that it’s cancer.”

“Ah, of the liver, I suppose,” commented the physician.

“Why on earth should you suppose that?” demanded Mrs. Sharpless suspiciously.

“Why, because cancer of the liver is the only form which could possibly be regarded as hopeless from the first.”

“All cancer, if it is really cancer, is hopeless,” declared the old lady with vigorous dogmatism. “Don’t tell me. I’ve seen too many cases die and too few get well.”

“Were those ‘few’ hopeless, too?” inquired Dr. Strong with bland slyness.

“I guess they weren’t cancer, at all,” retorted Mrs. Sharpless; “just doctors’ mistakes.”

“Doctors do make mistakes,” admitted the representative of the profession, “and cancer is one of the diseases where they are most commonly at fault. But the error isn’t of the kind that you suggest, Grandma Sharpless. Where they go wrong so often is in mistaking cancer for some less malignant trouble; not in mistaking the less malignant forms for cancer. And that wastes thousands of lives every year which might have been saved.”

“How could they have been saved?” asked the old lady combatively.

“Let me do the questioning for a minute, and perhaps we’ll get at that. Now, these many cases that you’ve known: were most of the fatal ones recent?”

“Not very,” she replied, after some consideration. “No; most of them were from ten years ago, back.”

“Exactly. Now, the few that recovered: when did these occur?”

“Within a few years.”

“None of the old cases recovered?”

“No.”

“But a fair proportion of the more recent ones have?”

“Yes.”

“All these were operated on, weren’t they?”

“Yes; I believe they were. But not all that were operated on lived.”

“Did a single one of those not operated on live?”

“Not so far as I can remember.”

“Well, there we have the truth about cancer in a few words; or, anyway, a good part of the truth. Up to twenty years ago or so, cancer was practically incurable. It always returned after operation. That was because the surgeon thought he needed only to cut out the cancer. Now he knows better; he knows that he must cut out all the tissue and the glands around the obvious cancer, and thus get the root of the growth out of the system.”

“And that cures?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“In a great majority of cases, if it is done early enough.” The Health Master dropped his book and beat time with an emphatic forefinger to his concluding words.

“But Agnes Westerly’s is cancer of the breast,” said Mrs. Clyde, as if that clinched the case against the patient.

“Just about the most favorable locality.”

“I thought it was the worst.”

“Where on earth do intelligent women collect their superstitions about cancer?” cried Dr. Strong. “Carcinoma of the breast is the commonest form among women, and the easiest to handle. Show me a case in the first stages and, with a good surgical hospital at hand, I’d almost guarantee recovery. It’s simply a question of removing the entire breast, and sometimes the adjacent glands. Ninety per cent of the early cases should get well.”

“But the operation itself is so terrible,” shuddered Mrs. Clyde.

“Terrible? Unpleasant, I’ll admit. But if you mean terrible in the sense of dangerous, or even serious, you’re far wrong again. The percentage of mortality from the operation itself is negligible. But the percentage of mortality without operation is 100 out of 100. So the choice is an easy one.”

“They seem to hold out little hope for Agnes Westerly.”

“Let’s hear about the circumstances,” suggested Dr. Strong.

“About two years ago—”

“That’s a bad beginning,” interrupted the physician, shaking his head.

“—She noticed a small lump in her right breast. It didn’t trouble her much—”

“It seldom does at the start.”

“—And she didn’t want to alarm her husband; so she said nothing about it. It kept getting a little larger very slowly, but there was no outside sore; so she thought it couldn’t be serious. If it were, she thought, it would pain her.”

“That fatal mistake! Pain is a late symptom in cancer—usually too late.”

“It was curious the way she finally came to find out. She read an advertisement in the paper, headed, ‘Any Lump in Woman’s Breast is Cancer.’”

“Yes; I know that advertisement. It’s put out by a scoundrel named Chamlee. Surely, she didn’t try his torturing treatment?”

“Oh, no. Agnes is too intelligent for that. But it frightened her into going to her doctor. He told her that a radical operation was her only chance. She was terribly frightened,—more afraid of the knife than of the disease, she told me,—and she insisted on delay until the pain grew intolerable. And now, they say, there’s only a slight chance. Isn’t it pitiful?”

“Pitiful, and typical. Mrs. Westerly, if she dies, is a type of suicide, the suicide of fear and ignorance. Two years’ waiting! And every day subtracting from her chance. That’s the curse of cancer; that people won’t understand the vital necessity of promptness.”

“But is it true that any lump in a woman’s breast is cancer?” asked Mrs. Sharpless.

“No; it’s a lie; a damnable lie, circulated by that quack to scare foolish women into his toils. Most of such lumps are non-malignant growths. This is true, though: that any lump in a woman’s breast is suspicious. It may be cancer; or it may develop into cancer. The only course is to find out.”

“How?”

‘“With the knife.”

“Isn’t that rather a severe method for a symptom that may not mean anything?”

“Not too severe, considering the danger. Whatever the lump may be, it has no business there in the breast, any more than a bullet has. If it is only a small benign tumor, the process of taking it out is very simple, and there is nothing further to do. While the patient is still under the anaesthetic, a microscopical examination of the tissue, which can be made in a few minutes in a well-equipped hospital, will determine whether the growth is malignant. If so, the whole breast is taken off, and the patient, in all probability, saved. If not, sew up the wound, and the subject is none the worse. Much the better, in fact, for the most innocent growth may develop cancer by irritation. Thirty per cent, or more, of breast cancers develop in this way.”

“But irritation alone won’t cause cancer, will it?” asked Mrs. Clyde, her restlessly inquiring mind reaching back, as was typical of her mental processes, toward first causes.

“No. There must be something else. What that something is, we don’t know. But we are pretty certain that it doesn’t develop unless there is irritation of some kind.”

“Isn’t cancer a germ disease?”

“Nobody knows. Some day we may—probably shall—find out. Meantime we have the knowledge of how to prevent it.”

“How to prevent a disease you don’t know the nature of?” said Mrs. Sharpless incredulously. “That sounds like nonsense.”

“Does it? What about smallpox? We haven’t any idea of what smallpox really is; but we are able to control it with practical certainty through vaccination.”

“Doctors don’t vaccinate for cancer,” remarked the practical-minded old lady.

“They have tried serums, but that is no use. As I said, the immediate occasion of cancer is irritation. There is overwhelming proof that an unhealing sore or irritation at any point is likely to result in the development of a cancer at that point, and at least a highly probable inference that, without such irritation, the disease would not develop.”

“Then why not get rid of the irritation?”

“Ah, there’s the point. That’s where the tremendous life-saving could be effected. Take a very simple instance, cancer of the lip. In a thousand cases recorded by one of the Johns Hopkins experts, there wasn’t one but had developed from a small sore, at first of innocent nature. It isn’t too much to say that this particular manifestation of cancer is absolutely preventable. If every person with a sore on the lip which doesn’t heal within three weeks were to go to a good surgeon, this hideous and defacing form of tumor would disappear from the earth. As for carcinoma of the tongue, one of the least hopeful of all varieties, no careful person need ever develop it. Good dentistry, which keeps the mouth free of jagged tooth-edges, is half the battle. The other half is caution on the part of smokers. If a white patch develops in the mouth, tobacco should be given up at once. Unless the patch heals within a few weeks, the patient should consult a physician, and, if necessary, have it removed by a minor operation. That’s all there is to that.”

“But if the irritant sore is internal?” inquired Mrs. Clyde.

“To the watchful it will give evidence of its presence, usually in time. If it is in the intestines or stomach, there is generally some uneasiness, vague, perhaps, but still suspicious, to announce the danger. Surgical records covering a long period show that eighty per cent of stomach cancers were preceded by definite gastric symptoms of more than a year’s duration. If it is in the uterus, there are definite signs which every woman ought to be taught to understand. And here, to go back to the matter of cure, even if the discovery isn’t made until cancer has actually developed, there is an excellent chance in the early stages. Cancer of the stomach used to be sure doom to a hideous death. Now, taking the cases as they come, the desperate chances with the early cases, more than a quarter are saved in the best surgical hospitals. Where the growth is in the womb or the intestines, with reasonably early discovery, a generous half should be repaired and returned to active life as good as new.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” said Mrs. Sharpless flatly.

“Simply because you’ve been steeped in the fatalism which surrounds cancer. That fatalism, which is so hard to combat, is what keeps women from the saving hope of the knife. ‘I’ve got to die anyway,’ they say, ‘and I’m not going to be carved up before I die.’ And so they throw away what chance they have. Oh, if only I had control of the newspapers of this city for one day a week or a month,—just for a half-column editorial,—what a saving of life I could effect! A little simple advice in straight-out terms would teach the people of this community to avoid poor Mrs. Westerly’s fate.”

“And drive ‘em all into the hands of the doctors,” said Mrs. Sharpless shrewdly. “A fine fattening of fees for your trade, young man.”

“Do you think so? Do you think that cancer ever fails to come to the physician at last? And do you think the fee is less because the surgeon has to do twice the amount of work with a hundredth of the hope of success?”

“No-o-o,” admitted the old lady, with some hesitancy; “I didn’t think of it in that light.”

“Few do. Oh, for the chance to teach people to think straight about this! Publicity is what we need so bitterly, and the only publicity goes to the quacks who pay for it, because the local newspapers don’t want to write about ‘unpleasant topics,’ forsooth!”

“Do you want a chance for some publicity in a small way?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“Do I! Show me the chance.”

“The Mothers’ Association meets here this afternoon. We haven’t much business on hand. Come in and talk to us for an hour.”

“Fine!” said the Health Master, with enthusiasm. “Half of that time will do me. How many will be there?”

“About sixty.”

“Very well. Just have me introduced with the statement that I’m going to talk informally on a subject of importance to all of you; and then help me out with a little object lesson. I’ll want sixty sealed envelopes for the members to draw.”

“Are you conducting a lottery, young man?” queried Grandma Sharpless.

“In a way. Rather I’m arranging an illustration for the great lottery which Life and Death conduct.”

Two hours later, the business of the meeting having been concluded, Mrs. Clyde asked, from the assembled mothers, the privilege of the floor for Dr. Strong, and this being granted, aroused the curiosity of the meeting by requesting each member to draw an envelope from the basket which she carried around, while the presiding officer introduced the speaker.

“Let me begin,” said the Health Master, “with an ungallant assumption. I’m going to assume that I’m talking to a gathering of middle-aged women. That being the case, I’m going on to a very unpleasant statement, to wit, that one out of every eight women here may reasonably expect to die of cancer in some form.”

A little subdued flutter passed through the room, and the name of Agnes Westerly was whispered.

“Yes; it is Mrs. Westerly’s case which is responsible for my being here,” said Dr. Strong, who had abnormally keen hearing. “I would like to save at least part of the eight out of your number, who are statistically doomed, from this probable fate. To bring the lesson home to you, I have had each of you draw an envelope. Eight of these represent death by cancer.”

Every eye in the room turned, with rather ghastly surmise, to the little white squares. But old Mrs. Sharpless rose from her place, marched upon the Health Master, as one who leads a charge, and in low but vehement tones protested: “I won’t be a party to any such nonsense. The idea! Scaring some woman that’s as well as you are into nervous collapse with your black dot or red cross or whatever you’ve got inside these envelopes.”

“Oh, Grandma Sharpless, Grandma Sharpless! Have you known me all this time not to trust me further than that?” whispered the Health Master. “Wait and see.”

A little woman near the rear of the room spoke up with a fine bravado: “I’m not afraid. It can’t give me cancer.” Then a pause, and a sigh of relief, which brought out a ripple of nervous laughter from the rest, as she said, “There’s nothing in mine.”

“Nor in mine,” added a young and pretty woman, in the second row, who had furtively and swiftly employed a hatpin to satisfy her curiosity.

“Nor mine!”—“Nor mine!” added a dozen voices, in varying tones of alleviated suspense.

“Not in any of them,” said Dr. Strong, smiling. “My little design was to arouse you collectively to a sense of the danger, not to frighten you individually into hysterics.” (At this point Mrs. Sharpless sat down abruptly and fanned a resentful face.) “The ugly fact remains, however: one out of every eight here is marked for death by the most dreadful of diseases, unless you do something about it.”

“What can we do?” inquired the minister’s wife, in the pause that followed this statement.

“Educate yourselves. If, in the process, you educate others, so much the better. Now I propose to tell you all about cancer in half an hour. Does that sound like a large contract? When I say ‘all,’ I mean all that it is necessary for you to know in order to protect yourselves. And, for good measure, I’ll answer any questions—if I can—within the limit of time.”

“What is cancer?” asked a voice.

“Ah! There is one that I can’t answer. No one knows. If I told you that it was a malignant tumor, that would be true, but it wouldn’t be an answer, because we don’t know the real nature and underlying cause of the tumor. Whether it is caused by a germ, science has not yet determined. But though we know nothing of the fundamental cause of the disease, we do understand, definitely, what is the immediate causative influence. It practically always arises from some local sore or irritation. Therefore—and here is my first important point—it is preventable.”

“That would be only theoretically, wouldn’t it, Dr. Strong?” asked the little woman who had first braved the venture of the sealed envelope. “One can’t get through life without bumps and scratches.”

“True. But ordinary bumps or scratches properly looked after don’t cause cancer. The sore must be an unhealing one, or the irritation a continued condition, in order to be dangerous. Remember this: any sort of a sore, inflammation, or scarification, external or internal, which continues more than a few weeks, is an invitation to cancer. Therefore, get rid of it.”

“But suppose the injury is in the stomach, where it can’t be got at?” asked a member.

“Why can’t it be got at?” demanded Dr. Strong.

“How can it be got at?” retorted the questioner.

“By opening up the stomach and examining it.”

“Well, I don’t want anybody to open up my stomach just to see what is inside it!” declared Mrs. Sharpless vigorously.

“Very likely not. Perhaps you’d feel different if you’d had steady pain or indigestion for two or three years.”

“Does that mean cancer?” asked a tall, sallow woman anxiously.

“Not by any means necessarily. But it may well mean gastric ulcer, and that may develop into cancer. Three fourths of the cases of carcinoma of the stomach which come into the surgeon’s hands have developed from gastric ulcer.”

“Is there no cure but the knife?” inquired Mrs. Clyde.

“Not for the cancer. For the gastric ulcer, yes. Careful medical care and diet often cure it. The trouble is that patients insist on diet and drugs in cases where they have proved themselves ineffectual. Those cases should come to the surgeon. But it will take long to educate the public to the significance of long-continued abdominal pain or indigestion. The knife is the last thing they are willing to think of.”

“But stomach operations are terribly dangerous, aren’t they?” inquired a member.

“Not any more. They were once. The operation for gastric ulcer in the early stage is simple. Even developed cancer of the stomach can be cured by the knife in from twenty-five to thirty per cent of the cases. Without the knife, it is sure death. I’m glad we got to the stomach first, because that is the most obscure and least hopeful of the common locations of the growth. In carcinoma of the breast, the most prevalent form among women, there is one simple, inclusive rule of prevention and cure. Any lump in the breast should be regarded, as Blood-good of Johns Hopkins puts it, ‘as an acute disease.’ It should come out immediately. If such growths come at once to the surgeon, prevention and cure together would save probably ninety per cent of those who now die from this ‘creeping death,’ as our parents called it.

“Now, I’ll ask you to imagine for the moment that I am conducting a clinic, for I’m not going to mince words in speaking of cancer of the womb, the next commonest form. Any persistent irritation there is a peril. If there is a slight, steady, and untimely discharge, that’s a danger signal. The woman should at once have a microscopical examination made. This is simple, almost painless, and practically a sure determination of whether there is cancer or not. The thing to do is to find out.”

“But if it is cancer, is there any chance?” asked the lady of the hatpin.

“Would you regard tuberculosis as hopeless?”

“Of course not.”

“Your parents would have. But you have profited by popular education. If the public understood what to do in cancer as thoroughly as they know about tuberculosis, we’d save almost if not quite as many victims from the more terrible disease. Fatalism is as out of place in the one as in the other. The gist of the matter is taking the thing in time. Let me read you what the chairman of the Cancer Campaign Committee of the Congress of Surgeons of North America, Dr. Thomas S. Cullen, of Baltimore, says: ‘Surgeons are heartsick to see the many cancer patients begging for operations when the disease is so far advanced that nothing can be done. Cancer is in the beginning a local process and not a blood disease, and in its early stages can be completely removed. When the cancer is small the surgeon can, with one fourth the amount of labor, accomplish ten times the amount of good.’”

“Does that always mean the knife?” asked a timid-looking woman.

“Always. There is no other hope, once the malignant growth has begun. But the knife is not so terrible. In fact, in the early stages it is not terrible at all. Modern surgery has reduced pain to a minimum. The strongest argument against dread is a visit to a well-equipped surgical hospital, where one can see patients sitting up in bed and enjoying life a few days after a major operation. Even at the worst, the knife is less terrible than death, its certain alternative.”

“Why do you call it the certain alternative?” asked the minister’s wife. “I have seen facial cancer cured by concentrated ray treatment.”

“That wasn’t cancer; it was lupus,” replied Dr.

Strong; “a wholly different thing. True cancer of the face in its commonest location, the lips, is the most frequently cured of any form, but only by operation. Now here’s an interesting and suggestive point; taking lip-cancer patients as they come to us, we get perhaps sixty-five per cent of complete cures. With cancer of the womb, we get in all not more than forty per cent of recoveries. Perhaps some of you will be able to suggest the explanation for this contrast.”

“Because cancer of the lip isn’t as deadly a disease,” ventured some one.

“Cancer is cancer, wherever it is located. Unless it is removed it is always and equally deadly.”

“Then it is because the internal operation is so much more dangerous,” offered another member.

“No; uterine operations are easy and simple. It is simply because the sore on the face is obvious, plain, unmistakable evidence of something wrong; and the patient ordinarily gets into the surgeon’s hands early; that is, before the roots of the growth have spread and involved life itself. The difference in mortality between carcinoma of the lip and carcinoma of the womb is the difference between early operation and delayed operation. If uterine cancer or breast cancer were discovered as early as lip cancer, we’d save practically as many of the internal as we do of the external cases. And if all the lip cancer cases were noticed at the first development, we’d save ninety-five per cent of them.”

“Isn’t it the business of the physician to find out about the internal forms?” asked Mrs. Sharpless.

“Often the physician hasn’t the chance. The woman ought to do the first diagnosing herself. That is, she must be taught to recognize suspicious symptoms. In Germany there has been a campaign of education among women on cancer of the womb. The result is that more than twice as many Germans come to the operating table, in time to give a fair chance of permanent recovery in this class of cases, as do Americans.”

“How is the American woman, who knows nothing about such matters, to find out?” queried the minister’s wife.

“There is a campaign of education now under way here. Publications giving the basic facts about cancer, its prevention and cure, in simple and popular form, can be had from the American Society for the Control of Cancer,—Thomas M. Debevoise, secretary, 62 Cedar Street, New York City; or more detailed advice can be had from the Cancer Campaign Committee of the Congress of Surgeons of North America, Dr. Thomas S. Cullen, chairman, 3 West Preston Street, Baltimore; or from Dr. F. R. Green, 535 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, secretary of the Council of Health and Public Instruction of the American Medical Association.”

“Why not more easily and readily one’s own physician?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“Women don’t go to their own physicians early enough. It is necessary that they be trained to understand symptoms which do not at first seem serious enough for medical attention. Besides, I regret to confess, in this matter of cancer our physicians need educating, too. They are too prone to say, if they are not sure of the diagnosis, ‘Wait and see.’ Waiting to see is what kills three fourths of the women who succumb to cancer. Let me illustrate this peril by two cases which have come under my observation: The wife of a lawyer in a Western city had a severe attack of stomach trouble. Her doctor, a young and open-minded man, had the courage to say, T don’t know. But I’m afraid it’s cancer. You’d better go to such-and-such a hospital and let them see.’ The woman went. An exploratory incision was made and carcinoma found in the early stage. It was cut out and to-day she is as good as new.

“Now, this same lawyer had a friend who had been treated for months by a stomach specialist of some reputation. Under the treatment he had grown steadily thinner, paler, and weaker. ‘Indigestion, gastric intoxication,’ the specialist repeated, parrotlike, until the man himself, in his misery, began to suspect. At this point the lawyer friend got hold of him and took him to the hospital where his wife had been. The surgeons refused the case and sent the man away to die. Indignant, the lawyer sought the superintendent of the hospital.

“‘Why won’t you take my friend’s case?’

“‘It is inoperable.’

“‘Isn’t it cancer of the stomach, like my wife’s?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘You cured my wife. Why can’t you cure my friend?’

“The official shook his head.

“I want an answer,” insisted the lawyer.

“‘Well, frankly,’ said the other, ‘your wife’s physician knew his business. Your friend’s physician is a fool. He has killed his patient by delay.’

“Back home went the lawyer, and spread that story quietly. To-day the specialist’s practice is almost ruined; but he has learned an expensive lesson. The moral is this: If your doctor is doubtful whether your trouble is cancerous, and advises delay, get another doctor.

“Then, there is the ‘conservative’ type of practitioner, who is timid about making a complete job of his operation. One of this kind had the case of an acquaintance of mine who was stricken with cancer of the breast. The physician, under persuasion of his patient, I presume, advised excising only the tumor itself, but the husband, who had been reading up on cancer, insisted on a radical operation. The entire breast was removed. A year later the woman’s unmarried sister was afflicted in exactly the same way; but the discovery was made earlier, so that the case was a distinctly favorable one. The girl, however, would not consent to the radical operation, and the physician (the same man) declared it unnecessary. The tumor alone was cut out. The cancer reappeared and another operation was necessary. The girl died after cruel suffering. The married sister is alive, and, five years after the operation, as sound as a bell. That physician is a wiser man; also a sadder one. There’s a special moral to this, too: the operator has but one chance; he must do his work thoroughly, or he might better not do it at all. When cancer returns after operation—which means that the roots were not eradicated—it is invariably fatal.

“Here are a few things which I want every one of you to remember. Had I had time I’d have had them printed for each of you to take home, so important do I think them:—

“No cancer is hopeless when discovered early.

“Most cancer, discovered early, is permanently curable.

“The only cure is the knife.

“Medicines are worse than useless.

“Delay is more than dangerous; it is deadly.

“The one hope, and a strong one, is prompt and radical operation. A half-operation is worse than none at all.

“Most, if not all, cancer is preventable by correcting the minor difficulty from which it develops.

“With recognition of, and prompt action upon early symptoms, the death rate can be cut down at least a half; probably more.

“The fatalism which says: ‘If it’s cancer, I might as well give up,’ is foolish, cowardly, and suicidal.

“And, finally, here is some simple advice, intelligible to any thinking human being, which has been indorsed in printed form by the Congress of Surgeons of North America:—

“‘Be careful of persistent sores or irritations, external or internal.

“‘Be careful of yourself, without undue worry. At the first suspicious symptom go to some good physician and demand the truth. Don’t wait for pain to develop.

“‘If the doctor suspects cancer insist that he confirm or disprove his suspicions.

“‘Don’t be a hopeless fatalist. If it’s cancer face it bravely. With courage and prompt action the chances of recovery are all in your favor.

“‘Don’t defer an advised operation even for a day; and don’t shrink from the merciful knife, when the alternative is the merciless anguish of slow death.’

“For the woman who fears the knife, Dr. Charles H. Mayo, one of the greatest of living surgeons, has spoken the final words: ‘The risk is not in surgery, but in delayed surgery.’

“I have said my say, ladies, and there are five minutes left. Has any one any further questions?”

There was none. But as he stepped down, Mrs. Sharpless whispered to him: “I watched them while you talked, and half of those women are thinking, and thinking hard.”

Six months thereafter, Mrs. Clyde came into the Health Master’s office one day.

“I’ve just come from a sort of experience meeting of the Mothers’ Club,” she said.

“What was the topic this time?” asked Dr. Strong.

“Aftermath.”

“Of what?”

“Your cancer talk.”

“Anything definite?”

“Definite, indeed! Between fifteen and twenty of the members went away from that meeting where you talked, suspecting themselves of cancer.”

“That’s too many.”

“Yes. Ten of them had their fears set at rest right away.”

“I’m sorry to have frightened them; but one has to do a little harm in aiming at almost any good.”

“This was worth it. Half a dozen others had minor operations.”

“Perhaps saving major ones later.”

“Very likely. And four of them actually had cancer. Three out of the four are going to be well women. The fourth has an even chance. Dr. Strong, I don’t think you’ve done so good a day’s work since you brought health into this house.”

“I thank you,” said the doctor simply; “I think you are right. And you’ve given me the most profound and about the rarest satisfaction with which the physician is ever rewarded.”

“And that is?” she asked.

“The practical certainty of having definitely saved human life,” said the Health Master.