Cancer and its complications / by Charles Egerton Jenkins.

  • Jennings, Charles Egerton
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cancer and its complications / by Charles Egerton Jenkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I have never seen examples of what from theoretical con- siderations would be anticipated. Patients suffering from cancer are often found in the best general health, and it is only in the ulcerative stage, when deleterious or putrefactive products may become absorbed, that constitutional disturbance may arise. Such a condition is termed the cancerous cachexia, but there is nothing special about it. The cachexia will frequently disappear after the disease has been extirpated by opera- tion, or the foulness of the discharge, which poisons the system, destroyed by antiseptic agents. When cancer has once commenced, its duration, if unchecked, varies from a few months to many years. The rapidity of growth will vary with the part of the body first attacked, and the histological variety of the disease. In the majority of cases of cancer, however, which fall under our notice, the duration of the disease must be measured by years, even if only temporarily checked, as only too commonly happens, by inadequate operations, or those which have not been performed sufficiently early. Death, when it supervenes, results from the mechanical pressure of the primary neoplasm or of the secondary growths upon some vital part, when danger will be appre- hended by the anatomical relation of the tumour to such part; from blood-poisoning, and exhaustion, or from haemorrhages, either small and repeated from the growth itself, or profuse, resulting from the extension and ulcera- tion of the growth into some large-sized blood-vessels. Cancer is a disease which is found in all periods of life, though the vast proportion of cases occur in persons aged between forty-five and sixty-five years. Cancer rarely occurs under twenty or over seventy-five years of age ; nevertheless none are too old or too young to be attacked by cancer.* Statistics show that the annual mortality from cancer is increasing, both actually and relatively to the population. * When malignant disease occurs in childhood, and in youth, it is usually as sarcoma.
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