The nature of the cancerous processes and the cancerous cachexia, and the relation of local irritation to each / by Roswell Park.

  • Park, Roswell, 1852-1914.
Date:
[1900?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The nature of the cancerous processes and the cancerous cachexia, and the relation of local irritation to each / by Roswell Park. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    impossible to think of uterine cancer without thinking of some preceding and favoring lesion, like the use of a pessary, or many other things which will occur to all who reflect upon the subject. Bernard (These de Paris, 1895) has reported in one thesis at least six cases apparently due to use of the pessary. So, also, for the stomach. The re¬ lations which exist* between round ulcer and subsequent cancer have been considered by many pathologists. In 1848 Dittrich collected 160 cases of gastric cancer, in eight of which he found old cicatrices of ulcers. Lebert (.Krankh. des Mage?is) in 1878 re¬ ported a similar number of cases. The transformation of ulcer into cancer was particularly studied by Hauser, in 1883, who carefully described the changes in the gastric glands from normal to cancerous type. Heberlin estimates that 7% of gastric ulcers change later into cancer. Rosenheim puts this at 6%. Foreign bodies in the stomach producing traumatic ulcers have led also to the same result, as, for instance, in a case reported by Haslain (Lancet, 1889) where a piece of bone was arrested in the colon. So, too, vesical calculi have pro¬ duced sufficient irritation to lead to cancer, and there is strong reason to think that lithiasis, both renal and biliary, may produce malignant le¬ sions. Of 48 cases of cancer of the gall-bladder collected by Zenker (-Deutsche Arch. f. Klin. Med. 1889), in at least 41 of them previous gall¬ stone trouble could be positively made out. Over a year ago I had occasion to remove a large cancerous gall-blad¬ der with a considerable adjoining por¬ tion of the liver and found two large gall-stones, the larger of which was the size of a pullet’s egg. In other parts of the body, as well, this same sort of thing is noticed. Friedlander (Fortschritte der Med., 1885), for instance,has seen epithelioma developed around the wall of a lung cavity, and Ohloff has described ma¬ lignant alterations of the tracheal epi¬ thelium, from cylindrical to squamous, under the influence of irritation caused by the presence of the tracheotomy tube. He has, moreover, observed at least one case of epithelioma of the trachea subsequent to laryngeal le¬ sion. Evidently, then, as determined by numerous [observers, under the influence of constant irritation, cylin¬ drical or round epithelial cells can as¬ sume the squamous type and give rise to squamous-celled cancer. Moreover, in the respiratory organs we may see numerous examples of the effect of continuous irritation in the development of tumors. ThusHaert- ing and Hesse have described a form of tumor of the lungs almost peculiar to the miners of the Schneeberg, con¬ sisting of lymphosarcoma or endo¬ thelioma of the bronchial nodes and lungs, which seems to be due to the in¬ halation of the dust from the cobalt and arsenical ores which they are handling. There are certain relations which exist also between interstitial neph¬ ritis and the formation of adenocar¬ cinoma of the kidneys (Sabourin, Oettinger, Netter,^?^. de Med., 1885), between renal lithiasis and cancer of the kidney (Shattock, Israel, Hart¬ mann, Progres med., 1886), between lithiasis also and cancer of the bladder (Roesen, Munch, med. Woch., 1886), between chronic stricture of the ure¬ thra and cancer (Wasserman, These