The comparative prognosis is also probably better than cancer, as it pursues a less rapid course of development, and hence the patient may survive for a longer time.
The local dissemination of the cells cannot always be measured, and that their dissemination into the surrounding tissues may reach much beyond the boundaries of the apparent tumor must be regarded as an important element in considering the subject of prognosis in connection with treatment by ablation or cauterization. The widespread local dissemination of the cells of this growth is doubtless an explanation of the term at first applied to it—viz. recurrent fibroid.
TREATMENT.—It will not be necessary to consume the time of the reader by giving the treatment of sarcoma in detail, as most of it is identical with that of Cancer, and may be found under that head. I will only call attention to the excellent palliative effects of ergot: this drug will often arrest, and generally modify, the hemorrhage so often one of the most annoying symptoms. When the tumor is in a state of progressive necrosis, protrudes like a submucous fibrous tumor, or is pendulous, resembling the fibrous polypus, it may, by inducing contraction of the uterus, be expelled, partially if not completely, and thus for the time being do away with the source of sepsis. I have in several instances been highly gratified with its effects in this way. In one case, when the patient was so overwhelmed with symptoms of septic fever as to cause apprehension of immediate dissolution, the administration of ergot expelled large masses of sloughing tissue, and so cleansed the uterus that the symptoms subsided, the patient rallied, and lived several months in comfort. Not less than four times this process of expulsion was successful in relieving the same patient for long intervals: each time the medicine was administered relief was so marked that both she and her friends anticipated recovery.
CARCINOMA OR CANCER OF THE UTERUS.
BY W. H. BYFORD, M.D.
While it is possible that in very rare instances the scirrhous or colloid form of cancer may attack the uterus, the practitioner will seldom meet with either. I will therefore describe but two varieties—the soft or medullary, and the epithelial. Although there is much difference histologically and microscopically, they are so nearly allied in their clinical history that I feel justified in placing them together. In the clinical description of carcinoma I shall be governed more by what I have seen at the bedside than by the observation of others.