A monograph on diseases of the breast : their pathology and treatment, with special reference to cancer.

  • Williams, W. Roger (William Roger)
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A monograph on diseases of the breast : their pathology and treatment, with special reference to cancer. 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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    as evidence of the mfectiotis nature of the disease. Arnaudet^^ was the first to formulate these ideas. In certain remote rural districts in Normandy he found that cancer was two or three times more prevalent than in Paris. He also adduced instances of cancers co-existing in various organs of persons living in certain houses or in their vicinity. Hence he concluded that the locality where a cancer patient had lived was contaminated ; and he thought it probable that contagion was propagated chiefly through cider, water, &c. Similar views have since been advo- cated by Sorel,^'' Rebulet,^^ Guelliot,^^ Fabre,**^ Fiessinger,*^ Webb,^^ Power,*^ and others. As an example of the alleged epidemic occurrence of cancer Fiessinger cites the following group of cases. In a small village a woman died of cancer of the breast, and within a comparatively short space of time, two other women lodging in the house died of the same disease—rone of the rectum and the other of the vulva ; and, after a certain time, two neighbours also died—one of cancer of the stomach, and the other of sarcoma of the leg. On the strength of some exceptional coincidences of this kind, without any other requisite data, the exaggerated conclusion has been drawn that cancer is an epidemic disease, and such groups of cases have been styled cancer epidemics ! If the alleged epidemiology of cancer has no surer foundation than this to rest on, the less said about it the better. It will be time enough to entertain such surmises when the cancer microbe has been discovered. What to my mind completely negatives these assertions is the significant fact; that in the crowded cancer wards of the Middlesex Hospital, during the last 20 years, not a ^^ Le cancer dans une commune de Normandie, VUnion Med., 25 av., 1889, Normandie Med., i and 15 av., 1890, also 15 fev., 1891. Nouveaux faits a I'appui de la nature infectieux du cancer. ^' Normandie Med., dec, 1890. '^ Normandie Mid., I sept., 1891. ^ Gaz. des Hop., No. 139, 1892. ■• These de Lyon, juillet, 1892. De la Contagion du Cancer. ■ Rev. de Med., Jan., 1893. ■*- Birmingham Med. Rev., 1892. Brit. Med. Journal, vol, i., 1894, also p. 1240 and p. 1302.