CANCEROUS TUMORS, 9 



the muscle of the mucous membrane into the submucous con- 

 nective tissue, and thence burrow through the external muscular 

 layers. Similar views are expressed for cancers of the uterus, 

 the ovaries and other organs, while the general description of 

 cancer of the skin, as given by Thiersch, is fully endorsed. 



Waldeyer, like Virchow, pronounces against the doctrine of a 

 primar}^ cancer dyscrasia, which he regards as an utterly unjus- 

 tifiable assumption, and he explains the multiplication of can- 

 cerous growths in the internal organs by the transportation of 

 cancerous emboli — actual, detached fragments of living cancer 

 cylinders — through the lymphatics or the veins. His paper is 

 illustrated by several careful figures, evidently drawn from 

 nature. The author was probably not acquainted with Cohn- 

 heim's discoveries, published a few months before. Certainly, 

 in his account of the origin of the small-celled brood in the 

 connective tissue between the cancer cylinders, he does not 

 refer to the possibilit}^ that a part at least of the new elements 

 might be wandering corpuscles. 



In 18G9 Dr. Karl Koester published at Wi'irzburg the first 

 part of a work on the development of carcinoma and sarcoma,* 

 which next demands attention. Koester signalizes the fact 

 that when in epithelial cancer of the skin large horizontal 

 sections are prepared, the cancer cylinders are found to anas- 

 tomose freely, forming a true net-work, which corresponds in 

 form to the normal net-work of the lymphatics. By the action 

 of nitrate of silver on fresli sections he was able to demonstrate 

 the characteristic endothelium of the lymphatics on the sur- 

 face of the cj'linders in many places, while in others he ob- 

 tained appearances which led him to believe that the cells of 

 the cancer cylinders were produced by the multiplication of 

 these endothelial cells. 



The work of Koester, so fiir as published, was limited to the 



*Die Eutwicklung der Carcinome iiud Sarcomc, v n Dr. Karl Koester. Erste 

 Abtheilung. "Wurzburg, 18G0. 



