The path of improvement in cancer treatment / by Herbert Snow.

  • Snow, Herbert, 1847-1930.
Date:
[1893?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The path of improvement in cancer treatment / by Herbert Snow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lower extremities or labia, should enjoin simultaneous attention to the surface lymph-glands in the inguinal region on the same side, and so on. If, on the other hand, we wait until the lymph-organs in question have undergone appreciable enlargement, we may be reasonably certain that the infection has already passed to other glands beyond our reach, and will eventually reappear (recur). Gland-enlargement is a relatively late stage; we have a previous one of tenderness merely, and before that of insidious deposit not attended by symptoms. Each of these in carcinoma lasts several weeks. Needless to point out that from the lymphatic system germs eventually reach the blood. To excise with the usual display a malignant primary tumour, when we neglect the secondary deposits which we know must have already ensued, is a sham operation, not a real one. Again, it is commonly of more consequence to the individual to remove these secondary deposits than to take away the primary cancer, even when no more than immunity from future suffering, and transient prolongation of life can be hoped for. The evacuation of the axilla with a breast carcinoma serves effectually to preclude that very distressing symptom, u brawny cedema of the arm,” due to lymph-stasis, combined with constriction of the axillary vein by a ring of cancerous parenchyma in the lymphatics. The suffering attendant upon neglected epithelial deposit in the cervical lymph glands of a physically vigorous man must be in everyone’s knowledge. The primary lesion of Melanotic Cancer of the Integument (in the majority of instances an epithelial disease generated in the deeper layers of the Malpighian rete), is commonly to the last a small ulcer or warty growth of the most insignificant dimensions. It can be radically extirpated, as a rule, without difficulty, and without the least fear of local “ recurrence,” though too often the disease process is carried on to its fatal end by means of the previously infected lymph glands (see