Lectures on surgical pathology, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England / by James Paget.

  • James Paget
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on surgical pathology, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England / by James Paget. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    what proportion they are so cannot be exactly stated: Lebert assigns about 37 per cent, as the proportion of cancers in males: Dr. Walshe finds it scarcely more than 26 per cent. This is just one of the points on wliich the truth will not be known till statistics are collected by practitioners under whose charge the two sexes, and all the organs of each, fall in just proportions, and by whom the existence of internal cancers is as constantly ascertained by autopsy as that of external cancers. The frequency of cancer of the breast and uterus gives an apparently large preponderance of cases in women; but, on the other side, the cancers of the skin, bones, and digestive organs, greatly predominate in men. The liability of the breast makes scirrhous cancer by far most fre- quent in women: but this, in a general estimate, may be nearly balanced by the preponderance of epithelial, osteoid, and villous cancers in men.* The influence of age may be more definitely stated. Dr. Walshe has clearly shown that ' the mortality from cancer [i. e. the number of deaths in proportion to the number of persons living] ' goes on steadily increasing with each succeeding decade until the eightieth year.' His result is obtained from records of deaths; but it is almost exactly confirmed by the tables I have collected, showing the ages at which the cancers were first observed by the patients, or ascertained by their attendants. In 772 cases, including cancers of all kinds, the ages at which they appeared were as follows:— Under 10 years . 27 Between 10 and 20 . 30 20 „ 30 )> • . 78 30 „ 40 . 130 40 „ 50 }■> . 200 50 „ 60 . 152 60 „ 70 » . 98 70 „ 80 . 57 The proportions between these numbers and the numbers of persons living at the corresponding ages (calculated in the same manner as in the previous Lectures, pp. 617, 664, 714), will show the proportionate frequency of cancer at each period of life, and may be represented by the following numbers :— * The particular influences of sexual difference may be collected from pp. 615, 663, 713, 734, 746. On these and aU the q^iestions capable of being solved b}- statistics, the largest information is collected by Dr. Widshe, and in the tables of Mr. Sibley and Mr. Baker, Mod. Chir. Trans, vol. xlii. and xlv.