On cancer : its allies and counterfeits / by Thomas Weeden Cooke.

Cooke, Thomas Weeden.

Date:: 1865

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On cancer : its allies and counterfeits / by Thomas Weeden Cooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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after he has been informed of the rapidity with which the disease commonly returns in the cavity of the orbit. According to my experience, three months rarely elapse after an operation before the fungous growth reappears; and, although the outward appearance is perhaps less terrible than when no excision has taken place, the de- posits in the brain are more extensive, and life is more quickly put out. The operation is not attended with any immediate danger, and for a time, ease is obtained. This is, I think, all we can tell our patients as regards operation. On the other hand, if the tumour be left alone, and the system be supported by tonics and gene- rous diet, the disease will go on increasing, it is true, and there will be much suffering and much disfigure- ment, but life will be prolonged perhaps for some years. I have seen such a patient live four years after the first appearance of the disease. Mr. Dixon mentions the case of a child aged 8, not operated on, who lived three years and a half. He thinks, however, that ' there are exceptional cases in which the encephaloid deposit is so completely unconnected with the optic nerve itself, and confined within the limits of the eyeball, that removal of the latter may free the patient from all the encepha- loid deposit which, up to that time, has been developed in the system.' The insidious nature of this serious affection of the eye makes it necessary that we should have the earliest information of its onset, and fortunately we can now, by means of the ophthalmoscope, examine without any inconvenience the interior of the globe of the eye, as readily as we can through the telescope contemplate the ring of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter. Thus these exceptional cases ought to be diagnosed at