Cancer clinically considered / by John Bland-Sutton.

  • Sir John Bland-Sutton, 1st Baronet
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cancer clinically considered / by John Bland-Sutton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    64/148 (page 56)
    Under certain conditions, and we do not know what they are, these chorionic villi, instead of forming a healthy functional placenta, undergo a most remarkable change, and become transformed into a mass of things which looks like a collection of small grapes (Fig. 9). These chorionic villi undergo the peculiar change known as hydatidiform degeneration, because they look like the small vesicles which are such a characteristic feature of the disease which we call hydatids (echino¬ coccus disease). Many years ago Virchow, who studied this disease, found that these grape-like bodies con¬ sisted of myxomatous tissue, and in structure resembled an ordinary nasal polypus, and it was then called colloid disease. Nobody troubled very much about hydatidiform disease of the placenta until it was discovered that women who were subject to it were often the victims of a curious form of malignant disease of the uterus which very quickly destroyed them. When the matter came to be investigated it was pointed out that these grape-like villi are not degenerations, but if you examine microscopically complete sections of the so-called vesicles, you find that although the centre of these grape-like bodies consists of more or less indifferent structureless tissue, yet their periphery is covered by a very active epithelium (Fig. 10), with here and there the peculiar bodies found in the decidua known as decidual cells. Later, cases were found in which hydatidiform vesicles had eroded their way through the walls and projected on the peritoneal surface of the uterus. In 1889 Sanger removed a uterus on account of malignant disease : when the organ was cut across the surfaces thus exposed presented patches of soft tissue, resembling in colour the contents of a ripe pomegranate. This tissue, when examined micro¬ scopically, led Sanger to believe that it was derived from the decidua. In consequence, he described the