210 KANSAS UNIVERSITY SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



the breast. The nipple was somewhat retracted but not com- 

 pletely. The mass was movable over the muscle. The axillary 

 nodes were enlarged and hard. On February 5 the breast, to- 

 gether with the axillary lymph nodes, was removed. On March 

 13 a recurrence in the left breast was discovered, which was 

 removed on March 20. Twelve days later metastatic nodules in 

 the neck were removed. The patient died soon afterwards 

 from an apparently general carcinomatous involvement of the 

 body. From the foregoing history it is plain that this was an 

 extreme type of the most rapidly growing and malignant of 

 tumors." 



This material was not prepared especially for fine cytological 

 work because the discovery of its excellence for investigation 

 was not made until after its fixation. It was fixed in ten-per- 

 cent formalin and remained in a weaker solution until used. 

 I found the cell nests somewhat shrunken away from the sur- 

 rounding stroma and the chromatin either so swollen or so 

 poorly preserved that I was unable to make out details in re- 

 gard to the chromosomes. The fixation otherwise was good. 

 The tissue was mounted in paraffin and cut in sections eight 

 micra thick. Sections were stained in hsematoxylin for twelve 

 hours after being in a mordant of iron-alum for twelve hours. 

 They were then decolorized in the iron-alum solution to the 

 desired extent. 



The cells studied appeared in variously shaped pockets or 

 alveoli surrounded by dense white fibrous connective tissue. 

 This connective tissue stroma was penetrated more or less by 

 columns of tumor cells, one to three cells in diameter. In 

 short, this specimen in parts conformed to the scirrhus while 

 in others it was more of the medullary type of carcinoma. In 

 this paper I will confine my study to the cell nests or alveoli. 



In the first four figures I chose a typical field from widely 

 separated parts of the tumor for each drawing, and drew all 

 the structures appearing in that field. I did this to show the 

 similarity of the cell content of the tumor mass throughout. 

 The normal resting cell, with its variation in size, shape and 

 chromatin content, composed the greater number of cells of 

 each group. It was considered the normal resting cell because 

 of its uniform staining quality, its maintenance of cell and 

 nuclear wall, its content of regularly outlined chromatin nu- 

 cleoli within a single nucleus. Marked variation in any of these 



