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Obviously, the ultimate goal is prevention. Here cancer offers its usual paradoxes. There is no faintest clue as to how most of the commonest forms can be prevented; yet in those cases where trigger mechanisms have been spotted, preventive measures have been more effective than against any other disease. Scrotum cancer of U.S. oil workers, from a wax-pressing process, has been wiped out (as was chimney sweeps' cancer) by keeping the dangerous chemical at a distance. So has bladder cancer in the dye industry. Circumcision and scrupulous cleanliness markedly reduce a man's risk of cancer...
When children get sick, the commonest symptom is fever, and the first thing that most physicians do is try to get the temperature down. Despite the prevalence of this practice, it may be all wrong, says Stanford University's Dr. Alan K. Done in Pediatrics. When they rush to prescribe one of the hundreds of anti-fever drugs now marketed, physicians are attacking the symptom, not the underlying disease, and may be interfering with one of nature's defense mechanisms, says Pediatrician Done. And although some youngsters' miseries seem to be the result of, fever, other children...
...century Christians, driven underground by persecution, developed a mystical code. Commonest of the symbols, and still in use today, is the chi rho -a combination of the first two Greek letters of the word Christ to form a χ ρ. Similarly, early Christian worshipers and pilgrims used the Latin letters P and E for Peter, M for Mary, T for the Cross. These were often inserted in the names of the worshipers and those they wished to commemorate. Thus the name CRISPINA is written with a Greek X fused with the P, making the chi rho and indicating Crispina...
...doctors. Although he insists that coronary disease and early deaths from heart attacks undoubtedly have many causes, Dr. Keys reasons that an excess of cholesterol in the blood is almost certainly a danger signal. Also, there is evidence suggesting that high-fat meals increase the danger of blood clots, commonest cause of heart attacks...
Several diseases, of which cancer is the commonest, sometimes produce pain so continuous and intense that the most potent narcotics will not relieve it. One approach has been to cut white nerve bundles in the front part of the brain (lobotomy or leucotomy). This makes many victims better able to tolerate their pain, even though its actual intensity may not be reduced. Greatest danger: an overall dulling of the personality. More radical but also more logical is an attack through the thalamus, part of the central nervous system which relays many pain impulses to the higher perception centers. Biggest drawback...