Some surgeons, perhaps from a desire of singularity, or from a defect of their organs of sight, declared, that they had detected little worms in the parts, which, eating it up, produced all the disagreeable symptoms of cancer; and that to their introduction the disease was owing. The cure which they confidently proposed, was applying a piece of cold veal to the part, which would tempt the animals to quit their devastation. Others, perhaps originally from ridicule, though latterly in sober earnest, told their readers, that there were no worms, but a little wolf in the part, which might be made occasionally to show its head, by holding a piece of meat before the ulcer. Strange as this doctrine of living creatures producing cancer may appear, it is nevertheless adopted by a late very ingenious writer. When hydatids find their way into “a solid substance,” the consequence, in his opinion, will be cancer; and the success of an operation will, he conjectures, depend, in a great measure, upon these animals being confined in a common cyst, for then they may be all removed; whereas, if they be unconnected, some of the smaller ones may be allowed to remain[120]. From the surface of the cyst, which contains the animal, a fungus shoots out, and thus acts as a barrier between it and the skin; or, if the animal have been in the stomach, it separates it from the coats of that viscus, “preventing suppuration in the one instance, and absorption in the other[121].” This suppuration, “and disposition to fungate before the skin is broken,” if I understand him, is produced by the death of the animal; for, says he, “if hydatids possess the principle vitality during their transparent state, and their opacity is the effect of the loss of that principle, would they not, in the latter stage, stimulate the part in which they are situated to suppuration, as we find the case with the Guinea worm when dead[122]?” Concerning the manner in which these animals produce the symptoms of cancer, we are told, that “this enlargement of a foreign body, in a solid substance, and so extremely sensible as the breast, cannot but be attended with intense pain, and frequent inflammation[123].” A doctrine not far removed from that taught in the humoural schools, which maintained, that the coagulation and inspissation of the fluids distended the follicles of the glands, producing many cavities, and much pain[124]. [120] Adam’s Observations on Morbid Persons, p. 184. [121] Idem, p. 185. [122] Adam’s Observations on Morbid Persons, p. 184. [123] Idem, p. 161. [124] Van Swieten’s Commentaries, article Cancer.