The treatment of cancerous diseases by caustics : a critical enquiry into the modern therapeutics of cancer : being 'the address in surgery' delivered at Birmingham on the occasion of the 24th annual meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association / by Langston Parker.

  • Parker, Langston, 1805?-1871.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of cancerous diseases by caustics : a critical enquiry into the modern therapeutics of cancer : being 'the address in surgery' delivered at Birmingham on the occasion of the 24th annual meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association / by Langston Parker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    whole of it may be removed. The cut edges are generally directed then to be brought well together by means of hare-lip pins, and the Avound united by the first intention. After such operations relapses are most common. The relapse is the rule, the escape from it the exception; and this, doubtless, arises from the local circumstances that I have so often had occasion to allude to. Dr. Walshe says, p. 258, “ It is a matter of common belief that the lip is one of the situations in Avhich the excision of cancer may be undertaken with the strongest hopes of suc- cess; but,” continues he, “there can be no question but that the prevalent notion on this point is an exaggerated one,” and goes on curiously enough to say, “ that those cases Avhich have been quoted as cases of success, Avere syphilitic sores, Avhich have been cut away as cancers.” Dr. W. quotes the expe- rience of Dupuytren and Velpeau on these points as very gloomy; he believes the return almost invariably takes place in three or four months. In many cases the disease is hastened in its progress by the use ot the knife. “ According to our doctrine of these dis- eases,” says M. Lebert, “ the relapses are to be operated upon quickly and largely;” and he goes on to say, “We have seen a cure efifected after tAVO or three operations.” Most probably after the Avhole of the lip has been mutilated and cut aAvay. In all opera- tions on the loAver lip, tAvo things at once strike us: the deformity necessaril3^ produced by the operation, and the almost positive certainty of relapse. AYe may, then, reasonably inquire: Are there no means