72 



disease. Local irritations, injuries, &c, may excite cancer in pre- 

 disposed individuals. 



44. Cancer does not affect the sexes indifferently. Mr. Wilkinson 

 King* gives as the result of post-mortem examinations made at 

 Guy's Hospital, the extraordinary announcement that one-half of 

 the females who die ahout the age of 44 are subjects of cancerous 

 formations, and of males one-eighth only. 



45. Tubercle. — Dr. Burrows, in treating of the subject of tuber- 

 cular pericarditis, before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 

 February 23d, 1847, discusses the general question of the connection 

 of tubercular formation with inflammation. Differing from Laennec 

 and Rokitanski, and agreeing with the more prevalent opinion of 

 modern writers, he considers "these deposits to be independent of 

 inflammation, and in fact to be the cause of it. The existence of 

 tubercular pericarditis, though difficult to be recognized, may be 

 suspected in cases where the patient having been under the influence 

 of exciting causes of tubercular cachexia, exhibits symptoms of incipi- 

 ent phthisis which the auscultatory signs do not confirm. A similar 

 view is taken of tubercular peritonitis. 



4G. This view of the connection of tubercle and inflammation, 

 seems upon a comparison of the modern authorities upon the subject, 

 to be pretty generally entertained. Dr. William Addisonf stated 

 that he found tubercles in about one-third of the apparently healthy 

 lungs he had examined. The material deposited in the air cells of 

 the lungs in pneumonia, bears the same comparison to tubercular 

 matter, he thinks, that new pus docs to old. The same class of ob- 

 jects, — incoherent colourless cells, molecules and granular matter — 

 appears to constitute the material in both cases, in hepatization or 

 consolidation of the lungs from inflammation, and in consolidation 

 from tuberculous matter; and in both cases, also, the matt-rial takes 

 primarily the shape of the air cells in which it is seated. "Were we 

 to imagine," he continues, "the fluid clement of the old pus removed 

 or absorbed, the remaining solid matter would be, in my opinion, 

 tuberculous matter; the colourless elements of blood, pus, and 

 tubercle passing by imperceptible gradations into each other." 



* Med. Gazette, 1845. 



f Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal, April 7, 1S-17. 



