A course of lectures on tumors given under the aupices of the Cancer Commission of Harvard University.

  • Harvard University. Cancer Commission.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A course of lectures on tumors given under the aupices of the Cancer Commission of Harvard University. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    The serum from cases of advanced malignant growths failed to produce hemolysis. The reliability of this test has not been definitely established, although it is not denied that the sera of many cancer cases possess hemolytic properties. Difficulty is found in the fact that the serum in other conditions, notably tertiary syphilis, has been found to be also hemolytic. For the present, therefore, diagnosis is usually established by the histological examination of excised tissue. Even here difficulties arise. Although in most cases tumors are suffi- ciently advanced as to make their recognition possible, in certain instances it is impossible to decide whether or not we deal with a tumor. There must be, theoretically at least, all transitions between the normal tissues and tumors. Furthermore, when dealing with recognized tumors it is difficult to decide whether we are dealing with benign or malignant tumors. The nature of the tissue, the relative proportion of cells to intercellular substance, the evidence of invasion of normal tissue and the rate of growth as shown by the frequency of mitotic figures are all taken into account. The distinction between benign and malignant growths, however, remains an arbitrary one, and the possibility of accurately prophesying the future biological behavior of an apparently benign tumor must be questioned. The subject of treatment will be considered in other lectures of this course, so that I will say nothing more than that the experimental investigation of tumors has shown no mode of treatment which compares with complete surgical extirpation of tumors. Such are some of the general problems of cancer. If we turn now to the trend of recent tumor investigation, it will be found that there has been great activity in the investigation of experi- mentally inoculable tumors. The study of the natural incidence of tumors in different species of animals has shown their wide distribution throughout the vertebrate series. Types of tumors are found which are more or less peculiar to certain given species, and tumors appear to be more frequent in some species than in others. Notwithstanding the type peculiarities presented by each species, there is perfect analogy between the tumors of animals and of man. Since in animals we may to a large extent control conditions, opportunity is afforded for the most promis- ing line of investigation. As more study is devoted to the