Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or Kings Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer | Page 5

have patients daily coming to me who do not know what disease they are really labouring under, and express their astonishment on being told its real nature. By attending to the symptoms they might then attack the disease before it becomes fully developed, when it "often produces the most miserable objects of human wretchedness;" and when it frequently becomes impossible to say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further."

CANCER,
ITS NATURE AND SYMPTOMS.
Cancer is, unfortunately, one of those desperate diseases to which the human frame is liable, and more to be dreaded than any other, inasmuch as it is insidious in its approach, and destructive to the greatest degree when it is perfectly developed. It is so intractable and malignant in its nature that it is generally considered an incurable disease; and not without reason, as notwithstanding the great increase of knowledge amongst that valuable portion of the community, the medical profession, yet it baffles all their efforts to subdue it, and sets at defiance all the triumphs of science. This disease rarely occurs in young subjects. An eminent surgeon states, that in the course of nearly forty years' extensive practice, he has seen but two instances of its occurring under 30 years of age; most usually it commences at the age of between forty and fifty years. Like many other diseases it is frequently hereditary, many members of the same family having become the subjects of cancer. It most usually attacks the female breast, the lips, particularly the lower one, the tongue, the skin, and the glandular parts about the neck and arm-pits; the stomach, the liver, the lungs, and the brain, may also become affected with this terrible malady. Sometimes it commences without any ostensible cause, and the attention of the patient is frequently directed to the case by mere accident; at other times, blows, bruises, or continued pressure upon a part, may often be traced as the exciting cause. In either case, however, it is generally found in the state of a hard lump or knot, varying in its size, it is loose and moveable, without pain or discolouration of the skin. It may continue in this state for many months, or even years; it then enlarges, the surface of the tumour becomes more or less knotty or uneven; it becomes hot and painful, and the pain is of a peculiar darting, piercing nature, or what the faculty technically call lancinating; and the patient's health, which had hitherto continued tolerably well, now begins to suffer from the irritation of the disease. In process of time the part ulcerates, a discharge of fetid ichorous matter issues from it; sometimes it bleeds freely, and there is a burning pain in the part. The ulcer becomes of considerable size, and assumes a frightful aspect. The patient becomes dejected in his spirits, his countenance is sallow and woe worn, his appetite fails, his days and nights are full of sorrow and pain, the disease still progresses, till, finally, death comes to the aid of the unhappy sufferer, and closes the scene of anguish and misery.
Such is the progress of this appalling malady. It commences apparently in a trifling way, it terminates in destruction of life.
I have said that the patients' spirits are usually dejected in this disease, and I wish this to be particularly noticed, as it points out how cautious a medical man ought to be in stating positively to the sufferer the real nature of his complaint. The mind is so depressed by the disease, that the simple communication of the fact to the patient often produces such a shock to the feelings as he rarely recovers from; indeed, it often accelerates the death of the patient, and such being the case, I am quite certain that no man of experience, judgment, or common sense, would ever commit himself so seriously. Whenever it is done, it is usually committed by some daring unprincipled empiric, who often finds it to his interest to pronounce a case cancerous when in 99 cases out of 100 it is really not so. Now, with respect to the cure of cancer, I can confidently assert, that when the disease is really cancer, when it occurs as a constitutional disease, (as it almost always does) and when it is perfectly developed, no known remedy is in existence which has the power of destroying it. It sets even the knife at defiance, for I have repeatedly seen that when the disease has been scientifically extirpated, it either returns to the same part, or to the neighbourhood of the same part, and in such cases the disease has generally proceeded in its second attack with extraordinary rapidity. I am strengthened in this assertion by the observations of Professor Monro--he says, "Of nearly sixty cancers which I have