Although surgery is, at present, the best method to meet this condition,
personally I believe that more investigation into or trials of the
remedial treatment should be made, because cancer is a constitutional
disease, and it so very frequently recurs after removal with the knife.
Apropos to this, C. Mansell Moullin says in the Boston _Medical
Journal_: “There is at least as much hope after an internal remedy that
causes disappearance by atrophy or fatty degeneration as from the most
extensive removal by operation. On _a priori_ grounds there may be even
more.”
Among the numerous drugs or substances which have been experimented with
are the interstitial injection of alcohol 40 per cent., by Haase; the
injection of Pure Yeast Ferment, by De Bracher; subcutaneous use of 50
per cent. solution of the fluid extract of chelidonium majus re-enforced
by same drug per orem; the cataphoric diffusion of mercury from gold
electrodes used by Massey; and lastly the mixed toxins of the
streptococcus erysipelas and bacillus prodigiosus.
From my research the last is the only one that has attained any success
or wide reputation and not been relegated to the usual oblivion of other
medical fads. The reason for this I consider to be because Dr. Coley has
not only been persevering, but scientific, unbiased, and very cautious
in its advocacy. At first he hoped and believed that in some form it
would be beneficial in all forms of cancer; but he now only recommends
it in sarcoma, and claims marked results only in the spindle-celled
variety of this.
As in many other cases, the discovery of the influence of erysipelas on
sarcomatous growths was by investigation founded upon accidental
occurrences, to wit: Busch reported a case of multiple sarcoma of the
face cured by an attack of facial erysipelas; Durante, a sarcoma of the
neck; Biedert, an enormous round-celled sarcoma, including the mouth,
nose, and pharynx; Bruns, a melanotic sarcoma of the breast; Gerster and
Bull, each a recurrent sarcoma of the neck; all cured or disappeared
with no return, after an erysipelatous attack. This happy result does
not always follow erysipelas, as cases of sarcoma relieved by
erysipelas, and later recurring or progressing after the attack is over,
are reported by Busch, Nelaton, Deleus, Richochon, Winslow, Powes, and
Dowd.
On account of these accidental cures a few observers produced erysipelas
artificially by infusion with the living culture, with success in many
cases.
Then almost simultaneously Lassar of Berlin, Spronck of Utrecht, and
Coley of New York, believing that the curative action of erysipelas lay
in the toxin of the living culture, experimented and found that they
could produce equally good results with toxin, thereby avoiding both the
danger and discomfort of the patient passing through an attack of
erysipelas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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