A Treatise on the Breast, and Its Surgical Diseases (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885. Excerpt: ... removed, the recurring growth becomes less and less firm with each successive recurrence, until finally the tumor resembles the most typical form of embryonal connective tissue. a. Fibromata; fibroma; fibroid desmoid tumors. Billroth.)--We are now brought to a consideration of true neoplasms; of tumors composed of cells differing in type and arrangement from their matrix; of cell territories, that while they may not be separated from this matrix, are sufficiently characteristic to be always well marked; of cell centers that are self-contained, that are in a sense independent organisms. At isolated places the framework of the mammary gland becomes, under the stimulus of a peculiar irritation--not generally local, but more usually reflex, and not always known--the seat of a neoplastic inflammation. That this irritation is connected with the period of reproductive activity is apparent from the average age at which fibromata occur in the breast, from the twenty-eighth to the thirtieth year; but that this cause exerts any special influence in locating the neoplasm in the mammary gland is not probable, for the disease occurs not as frequently there as in other parts. Hence, while the predisposing cause of mammary fibroma may reside in an abnormal activity of the reproductive sphere, we must acknowledge that there is an exciting cause in the glandular function, probably connected with an imperfect evolution or involution of the organ. To the latter process the development of fibroma in the mammae is more especially to be referred; for if, as Billroth and Virchow have demonstrated, the younger fibromata show "little connective tissue, but numerous spindle-shaped cells," it is probable that the upfolding of the gland when imperfectly carried on, leaves about the d...