On the use of chloride of zinc in surgical operations and injuries, and especially in operations for the removal of cancerous tumours / by Campbell de Morgan.

  • De Morgan, Campbell Greig, 1811-1876.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the use of chloride of zinc in surgical operations and injuries, and especially in operations for the removal of cancerous tumours / by Campbell de Morgan. 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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    belief in a cancerous diathesis is based mainly, if not exclusively, on the ground that a cancerous tumour is very prone to return after its removal, or to re-appear in distant parts when once formed, one may reasonably demur to such an opinion. If recurrence sometimes depend on dissemination, it ought to be shown that, in any particular case, this cause of recurrence could not be in operation before we accept the notion of a pre- existing cancerous diathesis. It should be shown that before any tumour exists there is, in some cases at least, a special state of system which indicates the probability of its future occurrence. Such a condition has never been seen. The fact that the ro-appeai'ance of a cancerous growth may be delayed for months, or even years, does not appear to me to militate against the view of the local nature of the disease. It does not necessarily follow that the tendency to growth shall be greater after operation than before; and we know that in many cases the growth of an original tumour will be held in abeyance for periods as long as those which have been found to elapse between the removal and the recurrence of a cancer. Nor must it be forgotten, that in a large number of these cases the recurrent tumour has already made considerable progress before the patient's attention is called to it. If, then, the view which has been so ably advocated by Mr. Moore be correct, that cancer is a local disease which becomes disseminated from the point of its first invasion, the practice of early extirpation cannot be too much insisted on. A tumour, as soon as it is recognised as cancerous, should be removed, if prac- ticable, at once. A few days, even, may make a difiTerence in the probabilities of success ; due not, perhaps, to any increase in the size of the tumour, but to the wider extension of its germs beyond its apparent limits. It would be better to extirpate doubt- ful tumours, some of which might turn out on after examination to be amenable to treatment, than to leave them to develope them-
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