Writing from the Department of Pathology of Columbia University, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Isaac Levin published a study of cancer etiology in 1910. Isaac Levin, “III. The Study of the Etiology of Cancer Based on Clinical Statistics,” 51 Ann. Surg. Jun 768 (1910). Levin looked at population and gender prevalence among cancer cases, without age correction or any statistical measure of random error. He compared population prevalence of specific or all-cause mortality without isolating exposure and outcome. Levin’s efforts were earnest, but surely they strike us as primitive. If you want to be disabused of the belief that epidemiology today is a primitive scientific enterprise, mired in methodologies and interpretative strategies of the past, Levin’s article is a welcome documentation that progress is possible and has in fact occurred.
Levin sums up what was known about occupation and cancer in 1910, which was not much:
“QUESTION 10,- OCCUPATION.–Occupation undoubtedly plays an important role in the causation of cancer. The carcinoma of the scrotum of the chimney sweeps, tumors of the bladder of the aniline workers, and X-ray cancer are well known, but it will require a great deal of research to, show how direct the influence is that these occupations exert on the causation of cancer, since only a certain number of the workers contract the disease.”
Id. at 776. No acknowledgment of dose response, or thresholds. No quantitation of risk against baselines.
Levin goes on to note that:
“[o]f extreme interest seems to be the fact, noted both in England and America, that cancer is comparatively rare among the miners. Table IV, compiled from the twelfth U. S. Census, illustrates this fact:
Table IV from Levin 1910
[Open in new window for clearer image]
Wilkesbarre and Scranton are mining towns and the death rate is lower than in Harrisburg or in the whole state of Pennsylvania. It seems also to be the opinion of the surgeons in Pennsylvania (personal communication) that cancer is rare among miners.”
Id. at 776.
There are some other quaint relics of the past here. On the questionnaire used for 4,000 cases or so, here is how Levin inquired of “Race or Nationality”
“RACE OR NATIONALITY. …………Australoid – Coolies of East India; Negroid – Negroes, Negritos of the Philippines; Mongoloid – Chinese, Japanese, American Indians, Filipinos; Melanochroic – Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Arabs, Jews; Xanthochroic – Fair Europeans. State not only the name of the race, but also of the subdivision]”
Id. at 772. Anthropology was fairly primitive as well, in 1910.
