A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 4

by Unknown

Medullary or Soft Cancer.

I use this term in a comparative sense. By it I mean a tumor caused by a carcinomatous deposit that infiltrates, enlarges, and renders more fragile than natural the parts attacked, which after a greater or less time undergo necrotic ulceration, death, or solution of the morbid growth, giving rise to extensive ulceration. I have never seen this variety convert the uterus into a tumor of encephaloid consistence. The deposit usually begins in the extremity of the cervix and extends up to the body, and without reference to the boundaries of different tissues attacks and involves the fibrous, mucous, and serous tissues, extending to any organ or substance that may be contiguous, thus infiltrating the bladder, rectum, connective tissues in the broad ligaments, and ovaries. The necrotic ulcerations of the part where the disease began, and the extension of the deposit in the more distant parts, progress simultaneously, the one diminishing while the other is increasing the bulk of the parts involved. This kind of progressive local dissemination and necrosis of cancerous matter often results in the more or less complete destruction of the uterus, bladder, and rectum.

Accompanying these morbid processes in the pelvis, cancerous cells migrate to other and distant portions of the body, creating new centres of carcinomatous disease. These multiple centres of disease are probably in all instances caused by the errant products of the pelvic disease. This view of the subject makes the general carcinomatous disease a constitutional infection, the same as the wandering cells of the chancre give rise to constitutional syphilis.

ETIOLOGY.—No one circumstance seems so intimately connected with the origin of cancer of the uterus as age, more than half the cases occurring between the fortieth and fiftieth years, 33 per cent. between the thirtieth and fortieth; this leaves only 20 per cent. for all other ages. It very seldom attacks the young under twenty-five years or the old over fifty. So far as I have been able to examine statistics, I am not sure that cancer occurs any more frequently among multipara than nullipara. The fact that the number of childbearing women far exceeds those who are not married nor fruitful is likely to mislead us in this respect. Race does not seem to afford even comparative exception. The negro and North American Indians seem to be subjects of cancer as frequently as the European races.

If there is anything in the idea of heredity as a causative influence, it must be rather through physiological similitude of children to parents than the transference of taint from the former to the latter. If cancer is a degeneration of tissues, as the effect of a law that organs in certain individuals undergo dissolution at a particular age, we can understand that the child may inherit such physiological effect from the mother. The cell-formation of the organs of the child will be capable of reaching the same period at which the disease was developed in the mother, when the normal histological changes will be interrupted and dissolution begins. In this view of the subject the child would by virtue of its organization inherit the mode of dying evinced in the mother.

Old writers, assuming that cancer was the result of a peculiar dyscrasia, described the state of general health as a causing condition. It does not seem, however, that the majority of people in whom cancer is developed exhibit any signs of ill-health until the local disease has made sufficient advance to account for their symptoms. Indeed, many present the appearance of a faultless condition of general health until the disease is discovered to have made hopeless progress. The same may be said of the local condition. It so often happens that we are assured by a patient that she had been congratulated by her friends as one especially favored by exemption from female weaknesses. I have yet to witness any evidence that chronic inflammation, congestion, or laceration of the uterus predisposes to malignant disease of any kind.

I do not mean by this to say that patients having chronic uterine ailments may not become the subjects of cancer of the uterus. There is nothing in the gross anatomy or the histological construction of cancer to indicate an analogy to inflammation. The allegation that the long-continued irritation of laceration invites a malignant deposit in the tissues involved is mere assumption, and should rank as an unproved hypothesis.

The location of the primary lesions is usually in the cervix, but occasionally it attacks other parts of the uterus, the body next in frequency to the cervix, and less commonly the fundus.

CLINICAL HISTORY.—The early stage of cancerous development is not marked by obvious symptoms. Judging from my own observation, a bloody discharge more frequently attracts the attention of the patient than any other symptom, and this does not appear until the deposit is somewhat extensive, and it indicates necrosis. The loss of blood is sometimes copious, but generally moderate in quantity. It may be intermittent or continuous. Not infrequently in menstruating women it assumes the form of menorrhagia. The next symptom generally is a discharge of ichor, usually colored, sometimes entirely clear. With the appearance of the serous discharge the cancerous odor becomes apparent and continues. These two exhausting and disgusting symptoms continue alternating with each other with the persistence of fate.

Another symptom of cancer of the uterus is pain. It is not, however, generally an early symptom. Often it is entirely absent until the disease has made great progress. When noticed early, the pain is sharp and lancinating, consisting of recurring twinges rather than of continuous pain. When it does not occur until later in the progress of the case, it is such as arises from the accompanying congestions and inflammations.