A treatise on cancer of the breast and of the mammary region / by A. Velpeau ; tr. from the French by W. Marsden.

  • Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on cancer of the breast and of the mammary region / by A. Velpeau ; tr. from the French by W. Marsden. 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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    wMcli lias in some measure an infancy, an adult condition, an old age: wliich may be in a normal state or altered, diseased or decomposed; lie admits also that this cellule requires a primitive blastema.* But then, whence comes this blastema itself, if it be not from the blood? and how could it engender the cancerous cellule if it were not, above all, cancerous itself? I have seen in some patients—in the dead body of a woman amongst others—who died of secondary cancers a long time after the extirpation of a cancer of the breast, the large vessels, the aorta especially, and the abdominal vena cava, filled with a concrete matter resembling the cancerous. Sharing a doubt thrown out at the time by Breschet and M. Andral respecting this fact, M. Brocaf believes, it is true, that these intravascular masses were only vegetations, prolongations of the tumours from without. But, on the one hand, the specimen having macerated for several days in alcohol, was naturally much altered when my confreres were called on to examine it; and on the other hand, their explanation would apply at the most to one of the masses of which I have spoken, seeing that evidently there was no continuity between several of these concretions and the external tumours; it could not, therefore, be doubted that the cancerous matter existed in this patient in the blood; I published the case in a very detailed manner,]: and the pathological specimens, drawn with care, became, in the Academy of Medicine, a subject of interesting discussion. In my opinion, the cellule called cancerous is only a secondary product, instead of being the element sine quel non of the disease; and there must exist, besides, some more intimate element which science still requires, to determine the true nature of cancer. Once accumulated in the bosom of tumours, the cancerous cellule seems to play there an important part; * Phys. Pathol., t. ii. p. 257 et suiv. t Memoire cite, p. 604. X Cas Itemarquable de Maladie Cancereuse, &c., 1825.