The cure of the "incurable" : a plea for more accurate diagnosis and more careful prognosis in malignant disease / by William Seaman Bainbridge, A.M., Sc.D., M.D., C. M., New York City.

  • Bainbridge, William Seaman, 1870-1947
Date:
[1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The cure of the "incurable" : a plea for more accurate diagnosis and more careful prognosis in malignant disease / by William Seaman Bainbridge, A.M., Sc.D., M.D., C. M., New York City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tient be the humblest occupant of the hos¬ pital ward or the proudest “lord of the castle.” On the other hand, a reckless tendency to be on the safe side and to treat as-cancer every harmless lump and bump may be far-reaching in its evil conse¬ quences. The difficulties which beset the physician or surgeon as diagnostician in the matter of determining the question of malignancy or nonmalignancy, are not all that he is liable to encounter. As prognosticator he is prone to carry his patients too far into the high places of hope by treating as trivial matters which are of grave import; or he is apt to plunge them too deeply into the slough of despond by pronouncing as hope¬ less conditions those which may be curable, or at least amenable to palliation. From the point of view of diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis it may be con¬ venient to classify cases of cancer under the following heads: (1) Removable, hence curable; (2) seemingly irremovable and in¬ curable; (3) irremovable yet operable and curable; (4) irremovable and incurable, yet operable; (5) inoperable, irremovable, and incurable. The study of a few cases of each category would serve to convince the most sanguine investigator that there is an ur¬ gent call for more accurate diagnosis and more careful prognosis, not only with re-