The treatment of sarcoma and carcinoma by injections of mixed toxins / by C. Mansell Moullin.

  • Mansell-Moullin, C. W. (Charles William), 1851-1940.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of sarcoma and carcinoma by injections of mixed toxins / by C. Mansell Moullin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stances operation for malignant disease means mutilation, though from long habit we may not recognise it as such. Amputation is no remedy, though at present it seems to be the only method of treatment that holds out a prospect of saving life. It would take far too long and would serve no useful purpose, were I to attempt to enumerate the different plans that have been proposed for dealing with these growths. Most of them have no scientific basis of any kind. Many of them are absurd at first sight, and very few have met with the slightest success even in their authors' hands. I shall leave all these on one side. One method, however, the injection of Coley's fluid, a mixture of the toxins of the streptococcus of erysipelas and the bacillus prodigiosus, stands out apart from the rest. It is founded upon well-authenticated clinical data. It has been elaborated by systematic scientific observation and experi- ment, and it has been proved to be successful in a certain proportion of cases. I have tried it myself in ten with varying degrees of success, and I propose first to describe Lhe manner in which the method has been evolved step by step, and then to deal as impartially as I can with the results that have been obtained. I shall confine myself in the main to cases of sarcoma. In carcinoma it does not answer so well (although recently Dr. Coley has met with considerable success in the treatment of some forms of epitheHoma), and I shall only allude to its influence upon this class of malignant disease when the cases serve to illustrate some of the points involved. It has been known for many years, according to Fehleisen since the seventeenth century, that not only malignant growths, but chronic ulcers of the skin, lupus nodules, syphilitic sores and other affections, occasionally disappear with great rapidity after an attack of erysipelas. The number of cases that have been recorded with sufficient accuracy and detail is not a very large one, it is true. They are undoubtedly of exceptional occurrence. Many of them are of somewhat ancient date, as might be expected from the fact that erysipelas is much less common now than it used to be, and that the attacks are less severe than they were in pre-aseptic days ; but after making full allowance for all these defects there still remains a suf- ficient number of well authenticated instances to dispel at once the idea that the disappearance can be in any way due to mere coincidence.