The treatment of cancerous diseases by caustics : a critical enquiry into the modern therapeutics of cancer : being 'the address in surgery' delivered at Birmingham on the occasion of the 24th annual meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association / by Langston Parker.

  • Parker, Langston, 1805?-1871.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of cancerous diseases by caustics : a critical enquiry into the modern therapeutics of cancer : being 'the address in surgery' delivered at Birmingham on the occasion of the 24th annual meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association / by Langston Parker. 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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    in vogue on the Continent, consisting of the same ingredients, though in different proportions, fused and run into leaden tubes, like nitrate of silver or potassa fusa. In this form the remedy is known on the Continent as the caustic of “ Filhos.” It’ is composed of two parts of potass and one of lime, and is a most convenient, active, and useful remedy. Its inventor chiefly employed it in destroy- ing fungoid growths from the “ uterus,” what he terms “ fungoid ulcerations,” and which, according to the cases detailed by Dr. Filhos, appear to be varieties of epithelial cancers, some of them probably of the nature of what are termed “ cauliflower excrescence.” In a Clinical Lecture, reported in the “ Associa- tion Journal” for March 29, 1856, Dr. West reports a case of similar disease cured by the galvano' caustic, applied by Mr. Paget. This physician also remarks, in the same lecture, that the chief cancerous or cancroid growths from the uterus are of the epithelial kind, and it is to precisely this class of cases that the caustic of Dr. Filhos is suited. By the application of this remedy, which I have frequently used, the diseased mass may be gradually rubbed away into a kind of putrilage, or soap, with a very trivial amount of pain. J he amount of pain produced bears no relation to the activity and destructive agency of the caustic in such cases. All the alkaline caustics have the effect of producing a sanguineous oozing from the parts to which they are applied. They are unlike the chloride of zinc and the mineral acids in this B 2