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.
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![If tliey had been left out, the average length of life in those operated on -u'ould have stood at 50^ months. Mr. Baker's results are not very different from Mr. Sibley's. He gives the average dm*ation from the beginning to the end of the disease, for those not operated on, as, in scirrhus, 43 months, in medullary cancer 20 months, and in epithelial can- cer 27 months; while, in those who have undergone extirpa- tion, the length of life is stated to have been in scirrhus 55|- months, in medullary cancer 33-| months, and in the epithelial form 5T|- months. He makes the average length of life in all cases not operated on as 30 months, in those operated on 48 months. Mr. Baker still further shows that the period at which the operation is performed makes a diiference in the result which is quite far from what was commonly supposed, and that late operations usually give late recurrences, and a longer aver- age life than where the cancer is extirpated early. This, how- ever, he ex]Dlains by the fact that late operations are usually upon chronic cancers, which maintain after operation the same slow progress which characterized them before, and he does not seem to consider that his statistical result militates in any way against the propriety of an early operation. In applying the results obtained from these tables to cancer of the bones, we can only do so upon general principles. The number of cases of bone-cancer is so small that no reliable results can be obtained from their comparison. It seems pretty certain, however, that life is much more rapidly destroyed by primary cancer in the bones than by any other external or sm'- gical form. Thus Mr. Sibley gives the duration of life in cancer of breast as 32 J months, of the stomach 8|- months, of the bone 10 months; and M. Lebert gives very nearly the same view of their comparatively rapid fatality, though he places the duration of life in cancer of breast at 42 months, and in cancer of the bones at 27 months. Due allowance being made for this more rapid mortality, there seems to be no good reason why the gen- eral results, obtained from the study of this large niunber of eases occurring in the soft parts, may not safely be applied to the bones. The sources of fallacy in such tables become more evident the more they are studied, and yet, making all abate- ments from their authority w^hich the most fastidious may](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21014413_0421.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
