General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1898 Original Publisher: Baillire, Tindall and Cox Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION. Each specialized variety ot cell in the healthy body furnishes its own species of cancer. Each invariably breeds true, i. e., reproduces its own kind, and no other. Only one cell species is concerned at a time. There are no mixed forms of cancer except among the rare Blastomata. The ordinary cancer begins in a single group of cells; it may be in a single cell. The common attributes of cancer, whatever the species, are: 1. Progressive erosion. 2. Auto-infection. 3. Progressive tendency to death. The new cells progressively erode or devour the health)‘ tissues with which they come in contact. They, or broken-off fragments of their nuclei, are mechanically transplanted to more or less distant parts, where they freely grow and form new colonies. The sum of these, and of various other phenomena, is ’ a progressive tendency towards the death of the individual.‘ These attributes are shown by the different species, and even by different local forms of the same species, in very varying degrees. About the obscure groups marked in the following table with a note of interrogation hardly anything is certainly known. Cancer Or Malignant Disease. NON-CONGENITAL. The ordinary 'cancer, ’ comprising about 95 per cent, of all cases of malignant disease. Is always generated by a definite exciting cause. II. CONGENITAL. Blastoma, from j3Xacn-6s, germ. Often, though not always, spontaneous, and owning no extraneous excitant. Rare and exceptional in most of its forms, which have been described under various names: rhabdo-myom…
