Abstract
I HAVE no desire to embark on a controversy with Mr. Ellis Barker in a scientific journal like NATURE, though I have behind me thirty years' study of new growths. His hymn of hate above is no doubt a relic of the time when, as “Who's Who” informs us, he “devoted his literary career, ever since 1900, to warning England of the danger of a war with Germany and to urging military, naval, and economic preparation.” Mr. Ellis Barker may be an authority on the foundations of Germany, British socialism, tariff reform, and the Motherland and Empire, but we must be pardoned if we cannot accept him as the authority on the cause and prevention of cancer. Since the receipt of his onslaught, I have re-read his book and my considered opinion is that it is ridiculous. Mr. Ellis Barker must know perfectly well that the review of his book in NATURE is milk and water compared with the vitamin-free strong potions that have been administered to him on the subject of his book by the Lancet (1924, ii. 70), the British Medical Journal (1924, ii. 324), Science Progress (1924, 328), American Journal of Public Health (1924, xiv. 787), and the Journal of the American Medical Association (1924, lxxxiii. 784). I do not, in fact, remember having read in the medical press such wholesale condemnation of any book.
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The Causation of Cancer. Nature 114, 644 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/114644b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/114644b0
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