On cancer, as illustrated in ichthyosis of the tongue and allied diseases resulting from prolonged local irritation / by James F. Goodhart.

  • Goodhart, James Frederic, 1845-1916.
Date:
[between 1880 and 1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On cancer, as illustrated in ichthyosis of the tongue and allied diseases resulting from prolonged local irritation / by James F. Goodhart. 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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    tissues and so destroy them, but a process which shows a focus of cancer-cells, and a circumference far or near as the case may be, of healthy cells and between the one and the other all forms of cell intermediate. So that one can only come to the conclusion that the original cells of the normal structure are taking on the morbid activity, and growing into cancer- cells. This I have long held. But further, the spermatic influence may manifest itself in more than one way. Dr. Moxon dwelt upon the reproduction of the parent form in parts foreign to it, upon the presence of cylindrical epithelioma in the liver after a tumour in the rectum, or of bone in the lung after a bony tumour in the arm; but after all, these are the least common form of manifestation of secondary tumours. I should say that the secondary growths are on the whole more likely to put on the appearance of the cells of the part in which they occur than of those quite unlike them, and from which they have come: but even this latter case is no less an example of spermatism ; a child may be quite unlike its parent in external form, and yet may react in the same way to external stimuli, that is, he may write like the parent or speak like the parent, or have the same habits of thought or aptitude for a particular avocation, or he may be of some characteristic temperament, explosive or otherwise, and so on; and in the same way the progeny of cancer and liver-cell, for example, will very likely not be typical cancer, but a form of growth not like the original, except in the manifestation of a certain function of morbid overgrowth of the cell-elements. But even this spermatism is no absolute test of cancer, since it is probably seen in normal states of cell-function. Of this the healing of an ulcer by skin-grafting seems to me an example. It is xxnlikely that the formation of skin for the closure of a large sore takes place entirely from the grafts that are placed upon it. It is much more probable that the graft exercises a spermatic influence on the granula- tions which it finds ready to receive it, and these form skin, because the normal toned cells have set them a good example. Or again, the formation of hone around transplanted periosteum surely does not all form from the bit of transplanted bone membrane, but that starts the process and the other cells follow suit; so that after all the malignancy of cancer rests not only in its spermatic influence, but in a certain altered rhythm of cell