Contributions to the physiology and pathology of the breast and its lymphatic glands / by Charles Creighton.

  • Creighton, Charles, 1847-1927.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the physiology and pathology of the breast and its lymphatic glands / by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    shall best justify my introduction of it as a separate topic by quoting the conclusion that I have arrived at. The embryonic cells, in order to become the secreting cells of the mammary acini, go through a cycle of changes; and the changes that they undergo are precisely those that the cells of the mature organ undergo in producing their periodical secretion. The function of the breast IS therefore said to be a sustained repetition of its development. The first period of the breast is its development. Chapters VI. and VII. contain the application to disease of the physiological principles established in Chapters I. and II. They treat of morbid physiological processes of the breast, and they endeavour to show from the examination of a series of cases that the common and malignant tumours of the breast, as well as some of the rarer forms (Chapter VII.), owe their origin to functional irregularities of the gland. The varieties of cancers of the breast, hard and soft and the like, have necessarily been kept in view ; but the tumours are here discussed, not with reference to their subdivision on points of structure, but always with a view to making out the particular departure from the normal process of the gland to which their existence in each case is due. In other words, it is the excitation {Reiz) that is chiefly considered. In a former paper' I defended the use of the word cancer as a general name for all malignant tumours. It is here used in that sense; and it can be so applied with strict propriety to a class of tumours described in the sequel, which from the shape of their cells might be called sarcomata, but which are none the less the product of functional disturbance of the secreting parenchyma. The last chapter is an application to pathology of the facts arrived at in Chapter III., on the function of lymphatic glands. The lymphatic glands of the breast being viewed as functional appendages of the secreting gland, it is possible to treat their invasion or infection in cases of tumour-disease of that organ as being in a very particular way incidental to the health-relation- ship subsisting between them. This physiological clue to the infection of mammary lymphatic glands has been made use of, in the latter part of the chapter, to illustrate by resemblance and by contrast the general question of tumour-infection both as re- 1 On the Histogenesis of Secondary Tumours in the Liver, in the Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council for 1874, pp. 95, 96.