The treatment of inoperable sarcoma by bacterial toxins (the mixed toxins of the Streptococcus erysipelas and the Bacillus prodigiosus) / by William B. Coley.

  • Coley, William Bradley, 1862-1926.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The treatment of inoperable sarcoma by bacterial toxins (the mixed toxins of the Streptococcus erysipelas and the Bacillus prodigiosus) / by William B. Coley. 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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    CD ' •.CCS \ V \ 15f,, ■/J 8 7o The Treatment of Inoperable Sarcoma by Bacterial Toxins (the Mixed Toxins of the Streptococcus erysipelas and the Bacillus prodigiosus). By William B. Coley, M.D. (New York.)1 The subject upon which I have been asked to address you is one upon which I have been working constantly the last seventeen years, and one which has grown more interesting to me with each suc- ceeding year. While the results have not been as satisfactory as one who is seeking perfection could wish, they have been sufficiently real and tangible, I think, to be entitled to more careful consideration than they have yet received. Furthermore, they may have an important bearing upon the whole cancer problem, since, if by the adminis- tration of certain bacterial toxins we can cause the degeneration, death, and absorption of living tumour cells of one variety of cancer— sarcoma—it is not unreasonable to suppose that by the use of some other forms of bacterial toxins we may succeed in destroying or inhibiting the growth of the other and more common variety— carcinoma. At the outset I wish, at the risk of tiring the few of you who may have read and remember some of my former papers upon this subject, to give in the briefest possible words an outline of the early history of the method of treatment, and the several stages of its development, for the benefit of the many who have never heard of the mixed toxins of 1 Professor of Clinical Surgery at Cornell University.