Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cancer : its nature and treatment / by John Pattison. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![posing a lady came to me with a tumour in her breast and she was at times startled by the sudden shocks o. sharp pain darting through it. In such a case I should daily apply one of my applications in the form of oint ment, over and a little beyond the tumour. It woulc give no pain, or if any, a shght sensation of numbness This ointment would be kept on for five or six hours and at other times dressed with appropriate dressing dependent upon the case. In all human probability, h the course of three or four days, the sharp, agonising darting pain %vill have become much less frequent, am in the course of a week the tumour itself wiU hav( become perceptibly smaller. Absorption having already taken place, the general health and spirits of the patien would rapidly improve, and in the course of a fev months she would find no remains of disease. This is t favourable case, but all cases are as favourable if onl] taken in time; but, alas ! ladies and their friends listei to their surgeons, who teU them that it is a simpl tumour, that it will come to nothing, that they can cuT' it, and that they need not fear. They operate, or the; use causties, or they partially freeze it, or otherwis mismanage it, so that it soon degenerates into malignan scirrhus. To exemplify this common case, I wiU quot what a lady told me not many days ago in her own case Case CCLXI. “ This lady, for a number of months pas has come regularly up to London, to consult an eminen consulting physician in relation to a tumour in her breasi This learned physician, time after time, declared it to bi nothing—that it was a mere simple tumour—that i would soon disappear. This was believed by the lad; for many months, but the disease, in spite of the doctor slowly advanced, until at last the repeated sharp, dartinj](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22396263_0054.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
