The Sun.
London, England, 1857-08-24 00:00:00

THE SURGEONS' REPORT FOR 1856.

"The accompanying statistical statement or our
labours during the pest year must convince you of the
appreciation which your charity obtains among that class
of the suffering poor this hoepital.was especially insti-
tuted to assist. Year after year the number of our
applicants for relief increases ; and from the most re-
mote parts of the United Kingdom, as Kell as from
America, the Mauritius, and other foreign parts, patients
journey to seek the benefits of the experience obtained
in this hospital. In our previous reports we have re-
ferred in detail to the large acesonaulation of facts which,
shown forth in the statistical tables, must now be ac-
cepted as sufficient data for us to establish laws for
the guidance of the practitioner who has to treat
this malady. The average return of the disease
after operation. according to our observation in
171 cases, obtains in the short space of fourteen
months, and that whether the Operation has been
effected by the knife, under chloroform without pain, or
through the protracted misery of a six weeks' ce.nterisa-
tion. The latter proceeding, namely, that of removing
time
immemorial,
e especially
cc
iaaul sl
yt i cbsy uneducated pretenders,, has been practised from
who obtain a fleeting reputation, by throwing the halo
of mystery over their proceedings, and vaunting that as
`cure' which is uLhapply but a temprary relief, Ob-
tained at the expense of the e eismitution, ten thousand
times more painful than amputation by the knife, asd
infinitely less efficacious i s retnoving•even the local
manifestation of the disease. If it he a cure of cancer to
remove the tumour by causVc, it is also a cure, and an
easy one, to remove it by the knife under chloroform, end
hundreds are so 4 cured' in al our recognised hospitals.
The legitimate professors of medicine, who knol that the
assertions of such cures' are uneretricicus, feel them-
selves bound to enlighten the public on this matter, and
the large Experience obtained at this hospital enables us
to speak re,sHvely of the uselessness of putting patients
to the protracted torture of the treatment by caustics
where the knife can be employed. Truly, there are
advanced cases in which caustic applications, in addition
to constif utiOnal treatment, tend,to check the progress
of the disease, but these are not generally the cases
which are un brtaken by persons professing permanent
cures. Our Experience leads us to the conviction that
the whole system is at fault, and that as bag as en-
couragement is given to the practice of mere local
eradication no progress will be male'in the treatment of
this malady. Ou the other band, by constitutional
treatment, and such heal remedies as experience has
suggested, we have the satisfaction of seeing very many
patients, who have been the subjects of cancer for 10 or
12 years, and patients of this hospital from its com-
mencement, restored and preserved in comparative
comfort and good bodily health. These gratifying
results are now so frequent, that we feel ourselves
bound by every possible means to bring them before the
public, and especially to invite the attention of the
medical profession to this particular mode of arresting
the disease.

" We have continued to attempt a classification of the
cases. which came before us under the head.; Scirrhu.4,'
Medulary,' (!cc., as representing different
forms of the disease recognised by the schools of surgery
of this country ; but as our experiende becomes more
extended, we feet the difficulty of adhering to this cla-el-
fication, fur two reasons--viz., that these supposed diffe
rent forms appear to us to be but stages of the same dis-
ease—the medullary, cystic, the colloid, or gelatiniform,
being in the greater numbsr of instances, but sequences
of tho ceirrhus and epithelial forms ; so that a case wLich
appears in our loJoka originally a 3 ecirrhus in very many
instances must subsequently be designated medullary,
and those which would be called epithelial have many of
the characters of scirrhus. The other reason which in-
validates these distinctions of the schools is that the
different tissues of the body, according, generally, to
their hardness, or softness, or to their exposed or en-
closed condition, naturally allow of, or retard, the de-
veiopment of the cancer; and thus we have, in the same
patient, acirrhus in one part, medullary in another, and