Cancer and phthisis occurring in different members of the same family / by Thomas W. Blake.

  • Blake, Thomas W.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cancer and phthisis occurring in different members of the same family / by Thomas W. Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Addison’s disease, after suffering six or seven years with pulmonary phthisis. Of the sons, three died of pulmonary phthisis, three are still living. In these cases the two diseases appeared to co-exist, but my impression is, that the cancer germs were the irritants on the male side, causing in them lung disease and consolidation, as many other indestructible irritants and foreign bodies do when lodged in the lung, and that these cancer cells may irritate tuberculous lung to breed bacilli; but that they do not, [the cancer cells] often germinate and thrive till they find their favourite nidus through the lymphatic system in a distant gland, and especially those of women, where the glandular system is more fully developed than in man, attacking the feeble and anaemic, but remaining torpid in the robust and strong. This last remark applies to both diseases, tuberculosis and cancer. I have to thank Sir Spencer Wells, Dr. J. S. Bristowe, Sir Wm. MacCormac, Mr. Gilmour, and one of the sur¬ vivors of this afflicted familv for the information that has * assisted me in recording these cases. I have altered the Christian names of the survivors and withheld the surnames—a point of honour we should always observe when the feelings of the survivors are to be con¬ sidered. Under these conditions they have generally no objection to the cases being quoted in the interest of science.