Volume 2

Practical manual of diseases of women and uterine therapeutics : for students and practitioners / by H. Macnaughton-Jones.

  • Macnaughton-Jones, H. (Henry), 1844-1918.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Practical manual of diseases of women and uterine therapeutics : for students and practitioners / by H. Macnaughton-Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/522 (page 606)
    decidual cells—necessarily, therefore, associated with pregnancy; and he called it ‘ deciduoma malignum.’ * Sanger’s observations on the malignant character of these degenerations were followed by those of Pfeiffer, 1890, Chiari, Muller, Gottschalk, Schmorl, K£dtenbach, and others. In France, Nove-Josserand, Lacroix, Paviot, Jeannel and Beach, recorded cases in 1893, and an able summary of the subject was written by Maurice Cazin in La Gynsecologie (Feb., 1896). Pestalozza, in Italy, recorded other cases, and an example of malignant mole, in which he recognized the chorion-epithelium as the source of the tumour tissue, as far back as 1891. Maier, in 1875, published in the Archives of Virchow two observations on tumours of the body of the uterus composed of decidual tissue. One of these cases was afterwards shown by Hegar to have died of a malignant affection considered to be cancer of the uterus. Sanger and Pfeiffer arrived, quite independently, at the same conclusions as to the nature and origin of the disease, and both suggested the term ‘ deciduoma malignum ’ as the most suitable desig- nation. In 1893 Sanger published a monograph on the subject, and included in it a classification of all the allied tumours which had up to that time been described. He was mistaken as to the origin of the cells composing the growth, but to him is primarily due the recognition of the condition as a specific malignant disease affecting the pregnant uterus. It had hitherto been confounded with other malignant affections. The next landmark in the history of the disease was the publi- cation of Marcliand’s work in 1895. He described for the first time the correct pathology of hydatiform mole. He maintained that deciduoma resulted from a proliferation of both layers of the chorionic epithelium, and he demonstrated the close resemblance between the characteristic histological features in simple and malignant mole, and between those in the latter and deciduomata. Finally, in 1896, Aschoff demonstrated the actual origin of a deciduoma from the epithelium of villi contained in it (Fig. 427). Aschoff also helped to re-establish the opinion that both layers of the chorionic epithelium were of fcetal epiblastic origin. A view formerly held, and still adhered to by a few, is that the growth is simply a sarcoma of the uterus, modified by the super- vention of pregnancy. This was the conclusion arrived at by the * ‘ Zwei aussergewohnliche Falle von Abortus ’—‘ Ueber Sarcoma uteri deciduo-cellulare,’