Cancer: Its Cause and Treatment, Volume 1 (of 2)

In 1915, a respected American physician made a radical argument that would cost him his place in the medical establishment. Lucius Duncan Bulkley, founder of the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital and editor of the field's only English-language journal, believed surgery was not the answer to cancer. Instead, he argued that the disease originated in faulty metabolism, driven by the meat-heavy diets, alcohol, and poor hygiene of modern Western life. He pointed to lower cancer rates in poorer nations eating rice-based diets as evidence. His prescription: vegetarian eating, elimination of tea and coffee, better living conditions, and medical treatment that left the scalpel untouched. This first volume collects his essays challenging the surgical orthodoxy of his day. The work stands as a historical document of medical heterodoxy, preserving the arguments of a man who was dismissed in his lifetime but whose ideas about diet and lifestyle anticipate modern understandings of chronic disease. For readers interested in medical history, the evolution of oncology, or the long tradition of doctors who questioned established practice, Bulkley's arguments remain provocative.