" CANCER-BODIES " 95 



I had for a long time desired to watch these bodies under 

 conditions similar to those that obtain during life, but so 

 great are the obstacles to such work in professional life, and 

 so reluctant is one to withhold treatment from a patient, 

 and so rapidly in syphilis are lesions usually removed by 

 treatment, that it was not until August 31, 1901, that I was 

 able to do this. Among my out-patients at the N.-W. 

 London Hospital was a man who had some obstinate 

 tertiary syphilitic lesions on the face and in the mouth that 

 resisted full doses of the biniodide of mercury and potassium, 

 which I had given to him by the mouth for several weeks. 

 These lesions were subsequently completely cured by intra- 

 muscular injections of sal-alembroth. I arranged for this 

 patient to attend at about 7 p.m. on the date mentioned, 

 and after wiping the surface of a warty lesion of the hard 

 palate with a dry sterilised swab I took a scraping with a 

 clean knife, not going sufficiently deeply to cause any 

 bleeding. The material thus obtained I mounted in its 

 own liquid exudation, covered it with a thin cover-glass, 

 and examined it on a Strieker's warm stage. With the 

 objects before me I made the graphic and written notes 

 which are reproduced in Fig. 26 and the accompanying 

 description. 



What are the bodies ? They are certainly of kindred 

 nature to those I described in cancers in 1892, but it is to 

 be noted that on the warm stage these bodies from the 

 tertiary lesion exhibited what could only be vital processes. 



