Contributions to the physiology and pathology of the breast and its lymphatic glands / by Charles Creighton.

  • Charles Creighton
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the physiology and pathology of the breast and its lymphatic glands / by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    199/262 (page 179)
    Ch.VIII] TUMO UR-INFECTION of lymphatic glands. 170 recognises the tumours to be entities or individuals that have the remarkable property of begetting their like. The investigation on infected lymphatic glands is also related to the rest of, the work, in that the process of their infection is as far as possible explained or analysed on the basis of the physio- logical chapter treating of the lymphatic glands of the breast. When the lymphatic glands are infected with the tumour-disease that is primary in the breast, one naturally refers for an explana- tion to the kind of relationship that subsists in health between the secreting organ and its lymphatic appendages. It is not for a moment to be expected that so vast a problem as that of infec- tion will find so simple a solution, but the intelligible relationship between the breast and its lymphatic glands offers a convenient means of approaching it. I shall therefore begin with the case of lymphatic glands infected from tumour of the breast, and after- wards proceed to consider the question generally, taking the facts from cases both of epithelial and connective-tissue tumours. The infected lymphatic glands of which preparations have been made, were derived from upwards of twenty different cases. Seve- ral of them were mammary cases, both in the human subject and in the dog and cat. In three cases the piimary tumours occurred in the stomach, and in one case the primary seat was the great intestine. The infection of lymphatic glands in cases of sarcoma is sometimes doubted, but there are four cases in this series belonging to that class. One of these, of which I have given a detailed account elsewhere^, was a tumour growing from the periosteum by the side of the fifth metatarsal bone; a large packet of lymphatic glands in the groin were affected, as well as many retroperitoneal glands. Another was a case of tumour of the upper jaw, containing many large multinuclear cells; in that case also the lymphatic glands within the abdomen were everywhere enlarged and changed into tumour-tissue. The other sarcomatous cases were a scapular tumour (in the dog), and a periosteal tumour of the tibia recurrent in the pelvis. The collection included also a number of miscellaneous cases, of which the most remarkable and the most instructive was a case (in the dog) of liver-tumour that appeared to be pri- mary, with secondary infection of portal and mesenteric glands. ' Journal of Anatomy and Physiology for April, 1878.