Cancer of the rectum : its pathology, diagnosis, and treatment, including a portion of the Jacksonian prize essay for 1876 / by W. Harrison Cripps.

  • Cripps, Harrison (William Harrison), 1850-1923.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cancer of the rectum : its pathology, diagnosis, and treatment, including a portion of the Jacksonian prize essay for 1876 / by W. Harrison Cripps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is alleged rapidly to follow an injury, as a matter of fact it is impossible to deny that the actual starting-point of cancerous growth results from an injury in a certain uumber of cases, and this, too, after injuries of a peculiar nature and in certain parts. The form of injury that apparently starts the disease is not an incised, lacerated, or punctured wound, but rather that form of injury known as contusion, and this, too, often of a trivial nature. Again, the parts in which a malignant tumour follows a blow is generally glandular tissue. A remarkable in- stance of this formation of malignant disease after an injury is, at the present time, under the care of Mr Thomas Smith at St Bartholomew's Hospital,* the details of which will be found in the footnote. * E. R—, police constable, in June, 1878, while arresting a prisoner, received a kick on the left breast; it was not very severe but caused him some pain at the time, and did not pre- vent bis being on duty the following day. Twenty-four hours after the injury there was a bruise the size of a florin around the nipple. The marks of this remained for some weeks and then disappeared. Ten weeks afterwards he noticed for the first time some hardness round the nipple, about the size of a small marble. He treated this by fomentations and poultices, but it continued steadily to increase. At the present time, rather more than a year after first noticing the growth, there is a large projecting tumour, the size of a fcetal head; the skin