[128] Warts are, with regard to their power of acting, to be considered in the same light with simple schirri.
[129] See the Note to p. [354].
[130] The simple schirrus now assumes that specific mode of inflammatory action which it is to continue, and may now be called the scrophulous or cancerous inflamed schirrus.
[131] Schirrus has generally been enumerated as one of the terminations of inflammation; but it cannot, properly speaking, be considered as such. There are only two kinds of termination, one in death, as, for instance, gangrene; the other in recovery, which is accomplished either directly by resolution, or indirectly by suppuration. Schirrus is not produced by a perfect and complete cessation of inflammation, but by a continuance of a low degree of inflammation, which renders the state of tumefaction which attends it natural to the part, before it goes off. This state, then, is not a termination of inflammation, but a consequence of its continuance.
[132] I have known two cases of this kind; in both the eye was affected. One boy had his eye extirpated; but a small part being left by the surgeon at the angle, the disease returned, and proved fatal. In another, the disease was in its incipient stage; but the relations would not submit to an operation.
[133] Med. Essays, Vol. V. p. 422.
[134] Pract. Obs. on Cancerous Complaints, by Mr. Pearson, p. 50.
[135] Arsenic mixed with sulphur, and powdered crow-foot, and made into a paste with yolk of egg, forms Plunket’s composition. Mixed with forty times its weight of powder of belladona, it forms an application which some time ago was much in repute in North America.
[136] Justamond on Cancers, p. 141. This gentleman relates a case, in which, by destroying the skin with lunar caustic, and then applying arsenic, he removed the gland. The arsenic, in this instance, was fused with antimony, in proportion of two parts of the first to one of the last. This was powdered and mixed with equal parts of powdered opium, and made into a liniment with yolk of egg.
[137] If I am not mistaken, the present Dr. Monro mentions, in his lectures, one instance, in which a small schirrus appeared to be removed by it; but whether this was simple or cancerous, I do not know.