A treatise on diseases of the bones / By Thomas M. Markoe.
- Thomas M. Markoe
- Date:
- 1872
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on diseases of the bones / By Thomas M. Markoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
349/436 page 335
![PART III. MALiaXA^T DISEASES OF BOZ^E. Ls' the liglit of recent microscopical and clinical stmiies, it is not easy exactly to define tlie meaning of tlie tenn malignant as applied to morbid growths. The difficulty does not arise so much from any want of precision in the term itself, or any want of appropriateness when applied to typical and well-marked cases, as it does from the varying degree in which the qualities it ex- presses are manifested in the diflerent tumors in which we study it, and the want of constant correspondence between their ana- tomical structure and their clinical history. It is pretty well agi'eed among pathologists that the chief clinical features of malignity are: 1. A tendency to soften and ulcerate. 2. A tendency to return after extirpation, even the most complete. 3. A disposition to appear in many places successively in the same individual, invading many tissues in the region originally aifected, and developing itself in many distant organs, where it seems to have no connection with the original disease. These clinical features have been sought to be associated with certain physical forms, which pathologists have hoped would prove characteristic. This hope has not been fully realized. ]No ana- tomical form has yet been found, which, of itself, is distinctive of cancer, and without which malignancy cannot exist. jSTo as- sociation or grouping of histological elements can be said to be absolutely characteristic of malignancy; and much as has been done by Yirchow, TVeber, TValdeyer, Beale, and Huxley, in un- ravelhng the laws of histogenesis, no mode of development, whether as to source, forms, rate, progress, or irregularities, can](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21014413_0349.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
