Transcribed from:
The Kingston Whig Standard

Treatment of
Cancer Is Hailed
in Detroit

“Cure” Writes Layman
in Detroit Saturday
Night – Work of Dr. Connell Is Lauded.

“Rather a brash statement to make?” asks a writer in Detroit Saturday Night of the heading “Cancer Cure Is Here at Last” over an article in the current issue of the journal.

Yes, but the layman who makes that statement here happens to know the men who have discovered and developed this cure, and knows that they are among the most conservative and ethical members of the medical profession, says the Detroit writer.

They shun the use of the word “cure” themselves. Force by pressure form the press after some hour years of successful experimentation to say something for public consumption, they reluctantly announce a “solution of the cancer problem,” though they are convinced that they have found it.

We respectfully suggest to any of our skeptical friends in the medical profession hereabout, who are inclined to doubt our statement, that they take themselves to Kingston, Ont., as opportunity offers and see what has happened to cancer there, and what is happening today. We offer that suggestion mostly in the interest of medical science, but partly because for nearly 30 years Saturday Night has been helping dispose quacks of all kinds, and if by any possible chance we are making a mistake in this instance we would like to know about it, the article continues.

Dr. Hendry C. Connell, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist, and an assistant professor in the faculty of medicine at Queen’s University is the discoverer of the new cancer treatment. He is the son of Dr. J. C. Connell, also an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist, and for 25 years dean of medicine at Queen’s. They believe they have conquered carcinoma and sarcoma, though they have not as yet applied their treatment to melanotic, or black, cancer, or to glioma, a cancer of the eye occurring in children. In the beginning they confined their experiments to incurable cases, but the results have proved so satisfactory that they are now attacking cancer in all stages.

Most Extraordinary

Dr. Iago Galdston, executive secretary of the information bureau of the New York Academy of Medicine, thinks that “the claims made by Dr. Connell are most extraordinary,” and that “the announcement is most remarkable if correct.” He awaits “dependable proof.” The proof will presently appear in

the medical journals when the Connells disclose their case records, with two years of history behind them – improvement of sight and hearing, restoration of stomach and bowel functions, recovery in general and strength.

Lay of proof, of course, means nothing to the scientific mind. The public has demonstrated too often that it will call for anything that looks like a cure for anything. Yet the fact is worth mentioning that at last reports there were 125 cancer patients in the Kingston General Hospital, all of them improving under the Connell treatment, that victims of cancer are moving into the city in increasing numbers, that more and more medical scientists are headed that way, that a year ago the city turned over a part of municipal hall to Dr. Connell for the enlargement of his research work, and that the department of health of the Ontario government is now collecting in all parts of the Dominion the cancer tissue from which Dr. Connell obtains the “ensol” or in popular parlance, the serum, which he uses in the treatment of the disease. Far away Australia has been calling by telephone for immediate information about the Connell cure; inquiries are flooding the mails. But there has been no exploitation whatever on the part of the Connell's for revenue purposes; on the contrary, they have borne the expense of their discovery and its development and application almost entirely themselves.

Still Skeptical

This is the last word in conservatism. Can even the most critical scientific mind doubt that what has been “repeatedly demonstrated” can be done again, and infinitely? All medical men, and all wise laymen, for that matter, are naturally skeptical of any cancer cure. The authorities of Queen’s University were at first so skeptical of Dr. Connell’s discovery that they suspected

he was wasting his time.

The Ontario Government, while lending him aid and encouragement, is still skeptical. “He hasn’t got to the point yet,” says Dr. B.T. Ghie, deputy minister of health, “where the government has put the stamp of approval on it as a cure, but he is going about it in the right way. The government, being responsible to the voters, will naturally be the last to say “yes”.

The Connells themselves have been skeptical. Hence their hesitancy about publicity, their determination to keep control of their discovery in their own hands until nobody questions it, and their general invitation to the medical profession to investigate their work. For what seems ages mankind has heard the announcement of cancer cures, only to find failure and disappointment. Though convinced of their success the Connells have made up their minds that there shall be no disappointment this time.

Opens New Field

And the possibilities of the Connell discovery are not confined to cancer. It opens up a new field of investigation. Heretofore serums have been obtained direct from germs. In this case the “ensol” is derived from the same kind of tissue it is designed to destroy. The “ensol” derived from cancer tissue dissolves only cancer tissue, no other. Why should not diphtheria and tuberculosis respond to the same method of treatment? The world is about to experience another sensation in medical science.

Dramatically enough, this sensation springs from one of the smaller and older settlements on the North American continent. Kingston, located at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, was first named Fort Frontenac in 1673, after Count Frontenac, the French ruler in Canada. The British took it in 1763. The United Empire Loyalists gave it its present name after the American Revolution. In modern times it has been a military, educational and public institution town, with a present population of some 20,000. It is now facing probably its worst worry of the century.

The students of Queen’s University, itself a hundred years old, have been its first line of support in many a tough year; but the students live in boarding houses, and the boarding houses are filling up with Connellites. The university, with hardly any residential facilities, is wondering how to house the scientists who are knocking on the door, and the hotels are few and small. Our best wish for the university town is that its worries in this respect multiply rapidly and continue indefinitely; for that will mean that the human race will at least have escaped from one of the foulest scourges that ever afflicted it.

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