TUMOURS AND CANCERS. 245 



to the gland from which it arose. Such a tumour is / 

 called an adenoma, and receives a specific name accord- ( 

 ing to the gland it resembles sebaceous, mammary, renal, 

 hepatic, &c. Adenomata may attain enormous size and \ 

 weigh many pounds. As life advances the mimicry is 

 crude, the cells, instead of clothing the alveoli in a 

 regular manner, are tumbled together in confusion. Such 

 tumours are cancers ; they grow aimlessly, having no 

 function to keep them in subjection, and being poorly 

 supplied with blood vessels, undergo degenerative 

 changes, and the cells being dispersed over the body 

 may reproduce, in remote tissues and organs, secondary 

 tumours resembling the original cancer from which they 

 arose. 



The glandular nature of cancers is further illustrated by 

 the fact that in their intimate structure they resemble 

 the glands in the immediate neighbourhood. Thus a 

 cancer of the lip resembles the cutaneous glands ; in the 

 liver it mimics the liver ; mammary cancer resembles im- 

 perfectly the secreting tissue of the breast, and so forth. 



Many competent pathologists are of opinion that 

 cancers like the infective tumours are due to a micro- 

 organism ; this is very probable, although thus far inqui- 

 ries in this direction have not yet succeeded in identifying 

 such agents ; nor is cancer inoculable from one animal 

 to another. Should a bacterium be ultimately found as 

 the causative agent, it will in no way affect the arrange- 

 ment of cancers into a group apart from other tumours, 

 as they exhibit in such a marked degree the glandular 

 type of structure which alone serves to distinguish them 

 from sarcomata, with which they were frequently con- 



