The diagnosis of surgical cancer / by John Zacharias Laurence.

  • John Zachariah Laurence
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diagnosis of surgical cancer / by John Zacharias Laurence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    ANATOMY OF THE BREAST. science which requires more for its solution a knowledge not only of the truth, but of the whole truth, than does the one at issue-—none in which a more correct valua- tion of the individual truths in relation to each other. Accurate conclusions can only be arrived at by inves- tigating all the circumstances of the individual case.— [Bennett.) Admitting that the importance of the minute anatomy of growths has been greatly overrated by certain devotees of the microscope, that still it often is a material aid in the solution of the nature of doubtful cases cannot well be denied. I cannot help remarking however that, notwithstanding the immense mass of microscopic observations of morbid products that we possess, their value is in a great degree depre- ciated by the indifferent acquaintance observers often seem to display of the intimate structure of the natural tissues in which the growth has occurred. Of the many persons who examine cancerous breasts with the micro- scope, how many are acquainted practically with the microscopic elements of the healthy breast ] Feeling such a deficiency myself, I some years ago examined into this point.* Following out the principle insisted on supra, of enlisting all the available points in a case, we will * The breast, when examined at the period of lactation, will be found to consist of a number of lobules, which by careful dissection under simple lenses, may be separated into still finer ones, these into still finer ones, and so on till we arrive at the ultimate lobules, which are about the size of a very small pin's head. Between all these lobules down to their finest subdivisions runs a filamentous tissue, which the microscope shews to consist of the characteristic waved fibres of ordinary cellular tissue. An ultimate lobule examined under a ^-object glass, presents a festooned border, each dilatation representing what may be termed an ultimate vesicle, which itself consists of a basement membrane and a layer of epithelium of