THE SEARCH FOR A SPECIFIC TREATMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS

Abstract

surgeon, for it is full of suggestion, and should point out to them the importance of pre-operative treatment, especially of mammary carcinoma, which is so largely neglected by English surgeons as compared with American surgeons. I have seen it too often to have any doubt on the subject, that operation for mammary carcinoma, of even the most favourable tvpe and done in the most thorough manner by the most capable surgeons, is followed in a large percentage of cases by rapid dissemination, which I am pure could have been averted by pre-operative treatment; whether by direct action on the carcinomatous cells, by its constrictive action on the lymphatics, or, as suggested in the paper above referred to, by its action on the blood, matters not. Returning again to the subject of small doses stimulating malignant growth, I am anxious to fnd out whether or * not this is one of the " myths " that are constantly copied from one writer by another and so perpetuated in medical literature, and I should. therefore be exceedingly grateful to any one who can give me any evidence, experimental or otherwise, to prove the statement.-I am, etc.,