Pathologic relationship of ulcer and carcinoma of the alimentary canal / Louis Blanchard Wilson and Byrd Charles Willis.

  • Wilson, Louis Blanchard.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Pathologic relationship of ulcer and carcinoma of the alimentary canal / Louis Blanchard Wilson and Byrd Charles Willis. 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.

    1/10
    PATHOLOGIC RELATI CARCINOMA OF THE LOUIS BLANCHARD WILSON, fam. 1'athologlst and Director of Laboratories Assistant Pathologist, St. Mary’s lIos])aifr ROCHESTER, MINN. N BYRD CHARLES WILLIS, M.B INTRODUCTORY Any line of investigation which promises assistance in combating the spread of cancer is worth while. For, discounting to the utmost government census figures everywhere, there yet remains the facts, first, that can- cer is increasing materially in relation to the total num- ber of deaths from all causes, and, second, that it is in- creasing materially in relation to the total number of living. Speaking broadly, it is probably increasing more rapidly than any other of our diseases. And this in- crease is greatest in the most prosperous nations and in the most prosperous classes within such nations. Further, it attacks individuals at their highest produc- tive period. It attacks particularly the primary organs of perpetuation of the individual, i. e., the reproductive apparatus. In the male approximately two-thirds and in the female one-fourth of all cancers develop in the alimentary canal, while one-half of all cancers of the female are in the reproductive organs. It seems to us that in our consuming interest in the initial excitant or ultimate cause of cancer, there is a possibility of our losing sight of the importance of the study of the tissue conditions of the affected individual. When the relationship of bacteria to infectious disease was first brought to the attention of the scientific world for a long tijne the specific germ was the chief object of study. Experience soon taught us, however, that in combating infectious diseases it is even more important * Road in tlio Section on Practice of Medicine of the American Medical Association, at the Sixty-first Annual Session, held at St. Louis, June. 1910.