Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill.
- Fleetwood Churchill
- Date:
- 1849
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill. 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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![On considering and comparing these two cases, it appears to me, that the application of a ligature in one case, and the death of the patient in the other, produced the same effect, that is, the supplies were cut off, and the vessels which had before con- tained the fluids collapsed and almost disappeared. If all cases of cauliflower excrescence are of the same structure,1 which, from the similarity of the discharge, there is reason to believe, the disease consists in the growth of a preternatural substance from the os uteri, which, when touched, feels like a solid substance, but when emptied of its contents collapses, so as to occupy but a small space.2 In this paper I have taken no notice of the symptoms arising from mechanical pressure, because they are common to this disease and all other tumours of the same magnitude occupying the same situation. Respecting the treatment of this disease, I can offer, at present, little satisfactory information. The disease being 1 [I think the evidence I have adduced proves that these morhid growths have a distinct characteristic structure, hut whether they are to he considered a variety of cancer, is at present disputed. Sir C. Clarke regards its malignancy as consisting in its power of reproduction ; Dr. Gooch considers it to be the same disease as fungus haematodes; Dr. Hooper, a polypoid cephaloma; Dr. Ashwell, of a cancerous character, or at least liable to become the seat of carcinomatous or encephaloid deposit. Drs. Burns and Walshe, however, do not consider it as necessarily malignant or carcinomatous. Dr. Simpson and Mr. S. Lee, in the extracts I have given, both state that the usual characters of cancer were wanting in the cases they examined with the microscope. Certainly the history of the disease is, in many respects, different from cancer— it occurs at an earlier age, the patient suffers less pain; for a long time the health is less affected, and the patient does not get so thin; there is no cancerous hectic, the glands of the groin are not affected, and when the patient does break down, it is evidently from loss of blood and the draining of excessive discharges. So far, then, I agree with those who regard the disease as not essentially can- cerous or malignant; but I am not sure, as yet, that the morbid growth may not be subsequently the seat of malignant deposit, as Dr. Ashwell has observed. In Dr. Montgomery's case, a disease, apparently cancerous, succeeded to the primary cauli- flower excrescence; and I have seen two cases lately in which, apparently, malignant tumours coexisted with this excrescence.—Ed.] 2 I consider that the circumstances which took place in the case where the liga- ture was applied, and the appearances on the inspection of the parts in the dead body, afford a satisfactory explanation why this disease is not found, as a tumour, in collections of morbid anatomy, and why it has not been described by any writer upon that subject. No account of it is to be found in the valuable work of Dr. Baillie upon Morbid Anatomy.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21030170_0545.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
