There’s a whole page on “Rising of the Lights” here. Seems it may have meant a few different things: diphtheria, but possibly also liver or stomach ailments, emphysema, or hysteria, as well as croup, which is what you’ll mostly find it translated as today. Only the last is a symptom (almost) exclusive to children.
I would be careful about taking early 20th century reports of cancer incidence in “native” populations at face value, given the confounding factors of shorter life spans and evident lack of autopsy studies to corroborate the clinical impression of lack of cancer cases.
As to Inuits and cancer, one known risk factor for cancers of the G.I. tract (especially stomach) is consumption of smoked fish and meat, something that is a longstanding tradition in this population. Color me :dubious: that a medical practitioner could have observed a large group of Inuits over time and never seen a case of gastric cancer.
I didn’t find any mention of smoked meat consumption in the text “A Study of the Diet and Metabolism of Eskimos Undertaken in 1908 on an Expedition to Greenland”:
I have zero knowledge of traditional Inuit food practices, but I would have thought that a population with easy access to freezing food would be less reliant on other preservation methods.
Native Alaskans mostly air-dried fish and meat, not smoked.
This source says that “rising of the lights” was a term for croup, which can still be fatal, and pleurisy, which isn’t but can make people WISH they were dead.
There is information to the contrary. For instance:
http://www.arcticcirclewildsalmon.com/blog/bid/290104/Alaska-Wild-Smoked-Salmon-The-Inuit-Way
http://green-gourmet.dk/inuit-slowfood-salmo-salar-smoked-on-heatherflowers/
Other points remain - accuracy of cancer diagnoses in 1925 was nowhere near what it is today and lifespans were shorter (allowing less time to develop cancer).
It has been pointed out that a relatively high percentage of published modern research is eventually refuted to some degree. I’d expect that observational/anecdotal reports from 80-100 years ago are significantly more prone to error.
Croup isn’t much fun, either. I had it when I was a kid, and I simply couldn’t stop coughing, for as long as I was awake (I don’t remember how long that was).