Douglas Daily Dispatch

Fight Against Cancer Fails; Newly Discovered Cancer Cure Makes Loss in First Trial.

SAN FRANCISCO. March 4 (A.P.)- Mrs. Gertrude Edwins, 36, and the mother of four children, lost her valiant fight against cancer here today at St. Mary's hospital, where she was taken following a dramatic airplane flight Feb. 14 from Wenatchee, Wash., to receive the newly discovered Coffey-Humber glandular extract experimental treatment. The flight and the devotion of her husband, who mortgaged his Lake Chelan fruit ranch and staked all to bring her to San Francisco in the last desperate hope the new treatment might save her life, aroused the attention and sympathy of the Pacific coast. She arrived in what physicians termed a "moribund" condition and slight hope was held out from the first for her ultimate recovery. Several injections of the extract and blood transfusions were given and hopes stirred by the improvement which followed were dispelled when physicians announced the change in her condition was probably due more to the blood transfusions and careful nursing than to effects of the extract. Pain with which she was suffering on her arrival apparently left her however, after the first injection of the extract. Relief of pain from cancer was one of the effects claimed for the extract by Dr. John D. Humber and Dr. Walter B. Coffey, its co-discoverers. While the husband kept his anxious vigil new-found friends kept the hospital room banked with flowers, and churches offered prayers for her recovery.