The place of surgery in malignancy / William Seaman Bainbridge, M.D., New York.

  • William Seaman Bainbridge
Date:
[1928[
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The place of surgery in malignancy / William Seaman Bainbridge, M.D., New York. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    when we discuss etiology) have their bearing on can¬ cer mortality rates. ETIOLOGY OF CANCER In a paper on cancer, a brief review of the appar¬ ent etiology of the disease might be in order—but what definite things concerning the etiology do we know today? All of the theories advanced—con¬ stitutional, parasitic, or strictly cellular—are insuffi¬ cient to account for the disease and we know but one definite thing—that cancer is a process of malignant cell proliferation, but the cause of the proliferation —this running amuck of the cells—is absolutely un¬ known. There are conjectures in plenty to account for the revolutionary reaction of cancer cells in the human body but there is no definite knowledge of what constitutes the process. We have come to realize that both pathologically and clinically there are the greatest variations in the mass which we term “cancer.” Pathologically we are able apparently to divide the mass into its component parts and yet how can we account for the degrees of virulence often found in malignant growths which have the same cellular formation un¬ der the microscope? The varieties of clinical char¬ acteristics in neoplasms of like nature can rarely be attributed to differences in constitution, or the cancer patient’s enviromnent. There are types of cancer so diversified—so far removed from one another clinically, that it is much easier to conceive of them as separate entities than as parts of a composite mass. The clinical and pathological differentiations which we find today in this mass which we term “cancer” would seem to point to the fact that it is of multiplex pathology. If all of the types of cancer which we are able to demonstrate are parts of the same dis¬ ease, may there not be other potent factors, unknown to us, underlying the malignant process within the host ? However, it is not always imperative that we know the etiology of a disease in order to work out
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