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

  • Thomas Spencer Wells
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    More than ten years ago, in June 1878, lecturing in this theatre, I gave a short account of Freund’s method of entirely removing a cancerous uterus through an in¬ cision in the abdominal wall, and referred to Blundell s four cases of removal through the vagina. I then said I thought it would be rarely that an entire uterus affected by cancer would be removed by laparotomy ; and I need now only add that the results of the practice have been so disappointing that it may be said to be practically abandoned. I have only twice removed the entire uterus by laparotomy, and the specimens in both cases are on the table before you. One is of some historical interest as having been the first instance in this country of excision of the entire gravid uterus. The patient was six months pregnant, and suffered from epithelioma of the cervix uteri. You see the entire uterus and the ovaries, just as they were removed, and the opening through which the foetus was extracted. The patient recovered from the operation and was in fairly good health for several months; but the disease recurred in the left iliac fossa, and death took place thirteen months after operation. The other case was much more satisfactory. A patient at the full term of pregnancy had her pelvis so blocked up by a uterine tumour that delivery was impossible. You see the uterus which I removed with both ovaries, and the cavity from which a living child was extracted. Becovery was as rapid as after a natural labour, and I received a photograph of mother and child a year after the opera¬ tion, both being quite well. I need say no more of these cases, as they have both been published, except that they have proved that in case of need the entire uterus, containing a foetus or a viable child, with considerable c
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