Cancer and its complications / by Charles Egerton Jennings.

  • Jennings, Charles Egerton
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cancer and its complications / by Charles Egerton Jennings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/170 page 15
    Thiersch, followed by Drs. Tilbury and Calcott Fox,* believed that the growth commences from the external root-sheath of the hair-follicles, which, in point of fact, is an extension of the rete Malpighii. Dr. Thin, on the other hand, considers Jacob's ulcer to be a cancerous adenoma of the sweat-glands.f Dr. Hume, who has devoted great pains to the task of elucidating the origin of rodent ulcer % by means of the careful study of microscopic sections of a few cases, favours the former view ; but these specimens, which are admirably illustrated in the British Medical Journal, § would seem to support the view that rodent ulcer may arise either from the hair-follicles or sebaceous glands. According to Dr. Hume, however, the first appearance of disease is noticed in a broadening from increased cell-formation of certain hair-follicles. The portion of the follicle seems usually to be the neck, or that part between the opening of the sebaceous gland into the follicle and the epidermis. The canal of these broadened follicles usually widens, pro- ducing an elliptical cavity in the section. In some follicles the broadening is not general, but takes the form of a distinct outgrowth from the edge, and in such the con- nection of the outgrowth with the external sheath of the follicle can be plainly traced. These changes are followed by increased vascularity in the corium, by the transuda- tion of leucocytes, and, later, by cedematous infiltration. The diseased follicle, with its sebaceous gland, assumes a deeper position, becomes constricted, and finally broken off. It is this deeper portion which is transformed into a patch of rodent tissue, by cell-proliferation. In the sebaceous glands, the process begins by prolifera- tion of their sheaths, which are diverticular from the sheaths of the hair-follicles. The ulcer is formed by atrophy of the epidermis superficial to the patches of rodent tissue. But in some cases, viz. in those accompanied by inflammation, there is considerable (secondary) thickening of the epidermis. * Pathological Society''s Transactions, 17, vol. xxx. f Ibid. % British Medical Journal, 1884, vol. i., pp. 5-7. § Loc. cit.
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