| Abstract: |
TOBACCO has been, for many years, under suspicion as a carcinogen. Pride of place has of late been accorded in the literature to the relationship between bronchial carcinoma and cigarette smoking, but in South India and in those parts of South-East Asia where persons of South Indian stock work, or have settled, oral cancer has long been a problem of importance. Essentially there are two types of oral cancer
that associated with the chewing of tobacco, usually admixed with some form of betel (vide infra), and that associated with smoked tobacco. This paper is primarily, but not exclusively, concerned with the former type of tumour, and examines the nature of the betel quid, touches briefly on its complex chemistry and pharmacology, reviews the clinical and experimental evidence pointing to the presence of a carcinogenic agent, probably tobacco, in the quid, and reports experiments in which malignancy was induced in the ears of mice painted for a prolonged period with an aqueous extract of a typical Singapore betel quid.
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