Word: scrotum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...anti-cancer defenses break down is, in most cases, unknown. Many authorities accept the idea of some hereditary susceptibility. Sometimes there are easy, if superficial, explanations. The combination of a chemical carcinogen (cancer-causing factor) with physical irritation is plainly villainous. Cancer of the scrotum among London chimney sweeps was described by Percivall Pott in 1775. The disease disappeared when the sweeps were taught to wash themselves clean of the carcinogenic soot. Lung cancer from inhaling chromate-ore dusts and nickel-refining fumes can be prevented by the wearing of masks, coupled with adequate ventilation. Even the cancer-causing tobacco...
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...
...increasing number of men in the prime of life are approaching doctors with nervous requests for "that operation." They want to be sterilized by a vasectomy or vasoligation-cutting and tying off the sperm-carrying tube (vas deferens) on each side in the scrotum...