On cancerous and cancroid growths ... with one hundred and ninety illustrations copied from nature and drawn on wood by the author / by John Hughes Bennett.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On cancerous and cancroid growths ... with one hundred and ninety illustrations copied from nature and drawn on wood by the author / by John Hughes Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    severe; at first confined to one spot, where there was a hard swelling ; sub- sequently there were three prominent parts, all hard, and in the neighbour- hood of the nipple ; and in all, the same pain. The breast rapidly increased in size, but the pain was principally seated in the prominent parts. On admis- sion the whole breast was greatly increased in size, heavy, the skin very vascular and tense, and in some parts slightly prominent portions, in which there was an indistinct sense of fluctuation. The breast perfectly smooth on the subjacent parts; considerable superficial tenderness, rendering an ex- amination difficult. No retraction of the nipple, and no enlargement of the neighbouring glands. The tumour weighed 4| pounds, and was composed of two distinct structures, dispersed irregularly throughout the whole mass ; a portion of each of which you received. Her recovery has been uninterrupted.” Description of the portion of Tumour received.—The portion of tumour I received was about three inches long, an inch broad, and two lines in depth. At one end it consisted of an amber-coloured, tolerably firm gelatinous mass, resembling slightly opaque gelatine, in which, here and there, faint striae were observable. Towards the centre of the slice several white lines were seen, here and there mixed up with the jelly-like substance. These lines became more and more numerous, and crowded together towards the other end of the section, which offered the appearance of a perfectly opaque white mass, resembling in its general aspect and consistence firm blame mange, and pre- sented a marked fibrous structure when torn. No milky juice could any where be squeezed from the surface. Microscopic Examination.—The amber-coloured gelatinous portion was com- posed principally of a structureless blastema, containing here and there fibres of extreme delicacy, which, with careful management of the light, might be observed to assume the form of fusiform corpuscles. In the midst of the jelly- like blastema, at different depths, were a number of compound granular masses. Some of these, when brought into focus, presented a number of granules, varying in size from the l-500th to the l-200th of a millimetre in diameter, which highly refracted light, and were aggregated together, without being- enclosed within a cell wall. When out of focus, these masses presented a brownish dark shadow, as represented Fig. 19. Where the amber-coloured jelly was passing into the white substance, the fusiform cells became more numerous, and were mingled with a number of oval nucleated cells of great delicacy, varying in size, and especially in length; some being caudate, others spindle-shaped, as towards the right side of Fig. 20. As the white substance became firmer, these elements were more compressed together, as is seen towards the left of the same figure. A thin section of the densest part of the white portion presented a fibrous structure, wholly composed of fusiform cells, which, on the addition of acetic acid, became more transparent, whilst the nuclei were rendered very distinct—(Fig. 21).