On the origin of cancer / by Alexander Ogston.

  • Ogston, Alexander, 1844-1929.
Date:
[1873]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the origin of cancer / by Alexander Ogston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of being produced from epithelium; and lienee that the origin of epithelium must always be sought in pre-existing epithelium. Arguing farther on the admittedly epithelial nature of the masses which, in epithelial cancer, fill the large interspaces between the hypertrophic papillae and among the connective-tissue trabeculae, he sought to prove that it was simply a disease arising from proliferation of pre-existing epithelium. He was successful in attaching extreme probability to his views, and they would doubtless have been more generally accepted but for the controversy then raging concerning the reproduction of destroyed epithelium. This controversy is not yet at an end, but there is little doubt how it must terminate. Billroth, Waldeyer, and others, took up the matter where Thiersch had left it, and applied his deductions to every species of cancer, asserting that every such tumour takes its origin from some portion of the rete Maipighii of the epidermis, or from the mucous epithelium, or true glandular epithelium (but not from the cells of the lymphatic glands), where these cells, multiplying by division and possessing the known characters of young epithelial cells—viz., spontaneous (amoeboid) movement and power of wandering, and consisting of nucleus and protoplasm unfettered by cell-wall—push their way among the neighbouring connective tissue, proliferate there, and send their progeny further; thus producing the nests of cells so characteristic of the true cancer structure. In a brief period the original focus has ramified in all directions, its sprouts penetrating hither and thither among the connective tissue, which becomes so permeated with epithelial offshoots that, on section, the latter appear like the pores of a sponge. The young cancer-cells thus wandering about possess the property of multiplying indefinitely by subdivision, but cannot excite the connective tissue to more participation than would be the result of similar mechanical inter¬ ference of any other sort. When they find their way into the lymphatics they excite no corresponding proliferation in the endothelium of those vessels, and when arrested in the lymphatic glands the infiltration which speedily follows is produced by their unaided activity. They have not the powder of infecting distant epithelium, and stimulating it to similar proliferation ,• when carried, for example, to the liver, the gland-cells of that organ, although epithelial in their nature, do not partake in the proliferation which follows in the interlobular spaces. Such views as these, so con¬ sonant with all the pathological principles indicated by Virchow and his followers, have attracted the attention of a multitude of pathologists, who, acknowledging their accuracy and beauty, have now adopted them, and form the school of thinkers most advanced in the domain of cancer pathology. Many others, while admitting the epithelial origin of epithelial cancer, hold a different source of development as possible for other forms, viz., Thiersch, Klebs, Rindfleisch, Neumann, Volkmann, etc. But, even among these observers, there are many admissions of the