Document peYBdwMXaovroN8d0e3z3gb1X

TUMORS OF THE SKIN m occupies a unique position among the various types of industrial malignant neoplasms for several reasons. Soot cancer of the skin is the first malignant tumor of definitely occupational origin, being described in 1775 by Percival Pott as the chimney-sweeps' cancer of the scrotum. This type of industrial malignant blastoma is also the first one which has been made the subject of a legislative action of a preventive and supervisory character. The first laws regulating the activities of the chimney-sweeps' trade were passed in England in 1788 and were intended to curtail the existing occupational hazard. The early scientific and legal attention, which this neoplasm received, continued until rather recent years and resulted in one of the most thorough and de tailed investigations of the various aspects made in connection with different industrial cancers.' III. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION AND INCIDENCE After the communication of Pott there appeared in England during the following decades a considerable number of reports on the subject of soot and chimney-sweeps' cancer [Bell (1794)5 Earle (1808)5 Simmons (1808)5 Wadd (1817)5 Aldis (1820); Earle (1823)5 Henry (1828)5 Cooper (1830)5 Hawkins (1838)5 Curling (1845)5 Dixon (1850)5 Paget (1850); Lawrence (1850); Milton (1860)5 Paget 0863)5 Lawson (1878)5 Heath (1883)5 Butlin (1889 to 1892)5 Spencer (1890); Newsholme (1899)5 Legge (1902)5 Oliver (1908)5 Morley (1911)5 Crow (1914)5 Southam and Wilson (1922)5 Leitch (1924)5 Bedford (1930)5 Henry and Irvine (1936)} Henry (1937); Kennaway and Kennaway (1937)]. No reliable data are available concerning the incidence of soot cancer among the chimney sweeps in England for the early part of the past century. Fiitterer found 47 lethal cases of this type of occupational cancer recorded in the English litera ture between 1808 and 1854. Butlin collected, for the years 1880 to 1882, 23 cases of scrotal cancer among chimney-sweeps. At, the turn of the century chimney-sweeps' cancer of the scrotum still represented the predominant type of scrotal malignancy observed in English hospitals. There was observed in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, 29 cases of sweep's cancer among a total of 39 scrotal cancer treated during 1880 to 1890. In the period of 1910 to 1912, 23 out of 107 deaths of chimney-sweeps were caused by scrotal malig nancy. Kennaway noted, for the same period, 16 fatalities from scrotal cancer in 65 deaths of chimney-sweeps, while Leitch mentioned for these years the occurrence of only 7 fatal cases of chimney-sweeps' cancer of the scrotum in a total of 16 fatalities from scrotal cancer. The same investigators recorded 10 cases of scrotal cancer in sweeps in 1921 to 1922, and 4 cases for 1923. Kennaway and Kennaway prepared for the period 1910 to 1923 the follow ing incidence table of cutaneous malignancy among chimney-sweeps in Eng land and Wales: