California v. New York

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Dr. Shirley Wilmott Wynne, 48, New York City's health commissioner, who has a row on with the New York Academy of Medicine and other local medical organizations (he believes in socialized medicine; they do not), sat through four hours of the hearing, on a hard seat, hard-eyed, alert. Dr. Hartwell, prosecutor for the opposition against Drs. Coffey & Humber, asked Dr. Wynne if he would say something. Said he with the others: "There are enough institutions for cancer work in and around New York City. We don't need another. Let Drs. Coffey & Humber supply our institutions with their extract. We'll give it a fair trial." Dr. James Ewing, 64, to whom Medicine paid rare homage this year (TIME, Jan. 12) was the delight of the whole hearing. He knew everybody and everything they knew about cancer. Dark, wearing dark glasses, slightly stoop-shouldered, he would sit slumped into a chair until cramped. Then he would limp out to the hall for a few puffs at a cigaret. Between puffs he would take a whimsical glance at the tense group of recriminating doctors and lawyers, whose time for the afternoon was worth at least $100,000. Cancer Situation, When the time came for Dr. Ewing to give his opinion, the cancer situation was well understood. Cancer is, after heart disease, the worst killer in the U. S.—111,569 in 1929, more in 1930, still more for 1931. (Federal data.) The cause is undetermined. Best thought advises minute study of both healthy and abnormal cells. At present the only approved method of attacking cancer is to recognize its presence quickly (the propaganda of the American Society for the Control of Cancer) and then to destroy the malignant growths by surgery (knife or cautery), X-rays or radium, alone or in combination. They can cure certain types of cancer in reachable parts of the body. They also, especially X-rays and radium, can do profound harm. Sometimes a cancer clears up of its own accord and gives the charlatan cause for boasting. With advanced cases of cancer, the specialist can only make the victim more comfortable while he slowly, painfully dies. Coffey-Humber Extract Drs. Coffey & Humber make a water extract from a part of the cortex (not the entire cortex as those not in the secret believe) of the adrenal glands of sheep. That cortical extract is a vasodilator, it relaxes the blood vessels. The walls of the blood vessels are threaded with sympathetic nerve fibres which, Drs. Coffey & Humber are positive, transmit the pain of cancer. Very quickly after a sufferer gets a Coffey-Humber injection, his pain quiets, and in 71% of the cases disappears. In most of the cases who do not die (Drs. Coffey & Humber will treat only the moribund, cases rejected as hopeless by at least two reputable doctors), the cancer becomes necrotic, ceases to smell, and sloughs off leaving a clean hole. That undeniably happens. Why that happens is debatable. Drs. Coffey & Humber reason a priori and inductively that cancer is a constitutional disease; that some principle in the body, probably a hormone, regulates cell growth; that when that principle becomes scant or disappears, body cells (flesh or bone) are apt to efflorate noxiously. Empirically they began some three years ago to locate that principle. After 211 experiments with various organs they found their principle —they sincerely believe—in a part of the adrenal cortex. If they have

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