LECTURE I. 



Delivered March 28, 1873. 



ON THE STRUCTURE OF CANCEROUS TUMORS, AND THE MANNER 

 IN WHICH ADJACENT PARTS ARE INVADED. 



By J. J. Woodward, ^ssis<aw< Surgeon, U.S.A. 



Gentlemen : — After much hesitation as to a subject suitable 

 for such an occasion as this, I determined to invite your atten- 

 tion to certain considerations with regard to Cancer, a disease 

 which merits study both because of the considerable mor- 

 talit}' it produces — more than six thousand deaths annually in 

 the United States* — and because of the obscurity which sur- 

 rounds every question connected with its origin, its nature, and 

 its successful treatment. 



The plan of my discourse is extremely simple. I shall 

 make no attempt to solve this most difficult of all pathological 

 problems. The time has not 3-et come for any one to tell why 

 cancers originate or how they can be prevented or cured. It 

 is only within the last eight years that we have begun to 

 obtain more definite ideas as to the minute anatomy of these 

 growths, their structural relations to surrounding parts, and 

 the mode in which they multiply in distant organs. The 

 purely anatomical questions involved are still so imperfectly 

 worked out, there is still so much that is unknown, so much 

 that is uncertain, so much as to which we have contradictory 

 testimony from sincere investigators, that a wide field is still 

 open for profitable histological research. 



♦Census of 1870, deaths of males, 'Z;.)(i\, females, Z,'.m, total, 6,224. 

 31 (1) 



