The Relation between the Cancer and Diabetes Death-rates

Abstract

Early in 1912 Professor E. C. C. Baly, F.R.S., acting on behalf of Mr Jessup, brought one of us a collection of Swiss statistics and requested that it should be analysed, with the object of measuring the relation between the death-rates of cancer and diabetes. In the course of this work we have been led to consider many problems of theoretical and practical interest, bearing partly on the method of analysis and partly on the results yielded; it would not be possible to deal with all these in a single paper and the present memoir is devoted to a study of the problem first suggested, viz. the relation between the cancer and diabetes death-rates. Since, however, this may be the first paper of a series, it will be convenient to deal at some length with the nature of the investigation and the motives which led us to undertake it.