Remarks on advances in the treatment of cancer of the cervix uteri / by Herbert R. Spencer, M.D., consulting obstetric physician to University College Hospital.

  • Spencer, Herbert R. (Herbert Ritchie), 1860-1941
Date:
[1928?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Remarks on advances in the treatment of cancer of the cervix uteri / by Herbert R. Spencer, M.D., consulting obstetric physician to University College Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to suspect the irritation of lacerated and inflamed tissues as likely to lead to cancer, and they have been known to be followed by the disease. Treatment of these sources of irritation is indicated, and, in rebellious cases, removal of the cervix is called for. One great advance in the prevention of cancer has been obtained by the substitution—for example, in cases of myoma—of total hysterectomy for the subtotal operation, thus avoiding cancer of the cervical stump, which has caused the death of several hundreds of women. It is a discredit to gynaecologists that these deaths should occur. I am glad to say that I abandoned the subtotal operation twenty- eight years ago; it would gratify me more than the last line of the quotation from Lucretius if my colleagues would do the same. Advances Made. I will now consider the advances which have been made in the treatment of cancer of the cervix. Omitting a few pessimists, to whom I have alluded in the paper mentioned, it will be generally admitted that remarkable progress has been made during the hundred years that have passed since Blundell removed a cancerous uterus in 1828;* this was the first tima that the cancerous uterus was successfully removed in this country, f James Blundell, obstetric physician to Guy’s Hospital, in 1823 wrote a valuable paper on “ Researches physio¬ logical and pathological,” which was not considered worthy of publication by the Medical and Chirurgical Society. The author published the paper privately in 1825; the copy of that paper in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons contains some manuscript notes by Blundell con¬ cerning the case of cancer of the cervix, and the specimen -—preserved in the museum of the Royal College of Physi¬ cians—I am able, through the courtesy of the curators, to show you. The experiments on animals performed by Blundell had an important influence in the development of abdominal section, and his case of vaginal hysterectomy for cancer of the cervix enlarged the field of operative treatment, which, until recent times, was the sole means of cure at our disposal. Hopeless indeed had been the outlook for patients from the earliest times of which we have records. The Anglo-Saxon leech (about a.d. 900) treated cancer by applying the ashes of a hound’s head to the wound; “if it will not yield to that take a man’s dung, dry it, thoroughly rub to dust, apply it. If with this thou art not able to cure him thou mayest never do it by any means.3 Even as late as 1791 Lowcler wrote of cancer of the uterus, “ This is a disease so incurable that physicians give it up.”4 That gynaecologists of the twentieth century are more hopeful is shown by the many researches in which they are * The patient sui'vivecl the operation nearly a year, chTing on February 7tli, 1829. Blundell also removed the cancerous uterus from three other patients, with fatal results. t Sauter of Constance, in 1822, was the first to perform the operation successfully.