On the treatment of cancer by the regulated application of an anæsthetic temperature / by James Arnott.

  • Arnott, James (James Moncrieff), 1794-1885.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the treatment of cancer by the regulated application of an anæsthetic temperature / by James Arnott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mode in which, congelation operates so beneficially as a palliative, and of the probability of its proving an effectual cure of the disease. As a palliative, it fulfils most completely the purposes of the first two classes of remedies just enumerated—viz., those pos¬ sessing antiphlogistic and anodyne properties, and, unlike these remedies, it fulfils them without any counterbalancing injurious properties. If cancer were essentially an inflammation, according to the doctrine of Broussais, there could be little doubt that congela¬ tion would, in many of its localities, prove a cure, for no in¬ flammation which can be put thoroughly under its influence will resist it. Or if the opinion of Professor Bennett be correct, that a “ temperature below the vegetating point must inevitably kill cancer-cell,” and if it be true, moreover, that the cancer-cell constitutes the whole of the disease, we might reasonably indulge the same hope. Spallanzani ascertained that few animalcula could survive exposure to a cold of Zero, Fahrenheit. At all events, as congelation surpasses in power every local therapeutical agent which does not actually destroy the animal texture, we may safely, from this, together with other considerations, con¬ clude that no remedial means hitherto proposed is, under any management, so likely to afford an effectual cure. The idea of using congelation in this disease was not sug¬ gested by any pathological theory, but by the observation of its effects in other diseases in some respects analogous—which, in the present imperfect state of physiology, is the most certain method of advancing therapeutical science. What instantly relieves a severe neuralgic or rheumatic pain; at once and per¬ manently removes a distressing and long enduring pruriginous or impetiginous eruption; speedily converts a highly irritable into a healing ulcer ; or completely arrests any acute inflam¬ mation within its reach—appeared very likely to be useful in cancer. The cases, it may be said, which have been related in the