On the pathological anatomy of multiple lymphosarcoma and its status with relation to Hodgkin's Disease / by W.G. MacCallum.

  • MacCallum, W. G. (William George), 1874-1944.
Date:
[1907?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the pathological anatomy of multiple lymphosarcoma and its status with relation to Hodgkin's Disease / by W.G. MacCallum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    it is extremely difficult to say certainly into which group they be¬ long, or whether they do not actually represent new and independent conditions. Nevertheless, with the aid of the methods mentioned, it is possible to classify most of the cases in somewhat the same way that the systematic botanist classifies plants, and with the pleasing result that new cases falling into one or other class, according to their general clinical and anatomical character and distribution, will be found to correspond also histologically with the other cases already in that class. This, of course, is not the ideal method of classification, and involves some risk of error, but as long as we do not know the etiological factors, it must suffice. It is far beyond the scope of this paper to discuss such a classifi¬ cation in general, and this is the more readily passed over since the admirable papers of Paltauf1 and Sternberg2 are so accessible. What is intended is rather the study of some 25 cases which occurred at autopsy at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in the hope that it may prove possible to clearly outline the condition known as multiple lymphosarcoma, and distinguish it from Hodg¬ kin’s disease on the one hand, and from round-celled sarcoma, lymphocytic leukemia, etc., on the other. This seems the more desirable because, although the distinctions are fairly clear in the papers referred to above, which come from European writers, there seems to be still some confusion in this country, as shown by the paper of H. W. Gibbons,3 in which it is claimed that after all there is no difference between lymphosarcoma and Hodgkin’s disease. It may be well to review briefly, with the aid of the summaries of Sternberg and Paltauf, the general characters of the conditions with which we have to deal. These are affections either local or gen¬ eralized of one part or other of the blood-forming organs—that is, of the lymphoid tissue or of the bone-marrow. They may cause changes limited strictly to these tissues and respecting their boun¬ daries, or they may extend or appear in an isolated way in other tissues. There may or may not be alterations in the blood which depend upon the changes in the hemopoietic tissues. In no single 1 Lubarsch and Ostertag, Ergebnisse, iii, 1. 3 Amer. Jour. Med. Sci., November, 1906. 2 Ibid., ix, 2.