The origin of cancer : considered with reference to the treatment of the disease / by Campbell de Morgan.

  • De Morgan, Campbell Greig, 1811-1876.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The origin of cancer : considered with reference to the treatment of the disease / by Campbell de Morgan. 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.

    9/98
    ON THE ORIGIN OF CANCER, ETC. What is the origin of Cancer? Few questions in pathology are of greater interest and importance. On the answer we are prepared to give to it depends the practice we should be prepared to follow. On its true solution depends the probable success of that practice. Not until it is correctly answered can we rationally approach the yet more important one, Is cancer curable ?—and if so, through what channel, and by what agency ? There is in the present day a considerable diversity of opinion as to the origin of cancer. By most it is considered as a blood disease; by some it is believed that while there is a morbid element in the blood, there must be a special condition of tissue as well. Some, while hesitating as to there being any materies morbi in the blood, yet look on it as necessarily con- stitutional ; and some would regard it as, in its early stages, a local disease, either with or without a pre- existing constitutional tendency. It is in favour of this latter view that the following remarks are made. From the earliest times the difficulty of eradicating the disease has been recognised. Hence it was looked on as arising from, some unwholesome state of the B