The Morton lecture on cancer and cancerous diseases : delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on Thursday, Nov. 29, 1888 / by Sir Spencer Wells.

  • Thomas Spencer Wells
Date:
1889
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Morton lecture on cancer and cancerous diseases : delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on Thursday, Nov. 29, 1888 / by Sir Spencer Wells. 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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    by inoculation they have not yet succeeded, they still hold (' British Medical Journal,' October 29, 1887) that ' the parasitic theory in some form or other is the most probable of any of those yet advanced.' What they now desire is that inoculated animals should be kept for the full term of their natural life under healthy sanitary conditions; as the life-history of the parasite may be a long one, and it may be a long time before the characteristic effects of inoculation could be ex- pected. The time at my disposal is so very short that I must at once pass on to the consideration of our duty as surgeons in treating sufferers from cancerous diseases, and I propose to ask you to reflect at your leisure upon certain questions about which the mind of the profes- sion is still not definitely settled, rather than to accept any conclusions of mine. The first of these questions is whether a cancerous growth alone, or the whole of the part or organ which it has invaded, should be removed; and I think the time has come to agree upon some general rule or prin- ciple of treatment. With regard to cancer of the breast, two very opposite opinions are held by men of high position as hospital surgeons. Mr. Nunn, after very large experience at the Middlesex Hospital, in his ad- mirable treatise on ' Cancer of the Breast,' says (p. 32): ' When an operation has been decided upon, the removal of the entire mammary gland must be complete—any partial removal is not only useless but worse than use- less ; the occurrence of the slightest speck of cancer in a gland declares that the whole organ is more or less ready for special degeneration.' Mr. Butlin. whose
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