Some results of the operative treatment of cancer of the breast / by W. Mitchell Banks.

  • Banks, W. Mitchell (William Mitchell), 1842-1904.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some results of the operative treatment of cancer of the breast / by W. Mitchell Banks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    it generally grows very slowly. There can be no doubt that cancer and good nutrition, as a rule, go together, so that it has always seemed to me a great pity that the term cancerous cachexia has become so common. In the early stage of cancer there is no such condition. Where is the cancerous cachexia in the red- faced, healthy-looking farmer who develops a little malignant sore on his tongue? The bodily state indicated by the term cachexia is only manifested when the disease has attained a terrible climax, and worn him out with pain and anxiety. Then, indeed, he looks woebegone enough, and is pointed out to students as an example of the cancerous cachexia, with the result, that they go away, and for the rest of their lives, think that everybody who has cancer must present this malignant aspect, and that, if he has not got the said aspect, he has not got cancer. This notion often leads to serious error in the early detection of cancerous disease, and it is to be hoped that the term will soon die a natural death, inasmuch as it does more harm by misleading the rising generation than it does good by its use in indicating a particular state of body. We in Liverpool happen to live in a district where cancer is common. We are in an area which the registrar-general's statistics clearly show to be of a malignant habit. The cause of this it is impossible to tell, but it is a fact; and possibly thus it is that my attention has for some time back been drawn to the subject. In 1877 I published a little article in the Liver- pool Keports, based upon a communication read to -a meeting of our branch of the British Medical Association. In this it was asserted that surgeons do not remove cancers of the breas After an interval of five years I feel obliged to reassert tb statement. Surgeons, as a rule, do not remove cancers of th breast. They persuade their patients that they do, and the almost persuade themselves. But there is always that little hi which they leave behind, and which they fondly hope will no' grow, because it is such a little bit. Alas ! that so little leaven should leaven the whole lump! If one turns to the suigery books of a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, the true method of removing a cancerous breast will be found. The breas