188 GLANDULAR CARCINOMATA. 



As regards minute structure, the thicker trabeculae of the 

 stroma usually consist of a striated connective tissue in which a 

 laro-e number of spindle-shaped cells are embedded. These tra- 

 beculse are not circular, but triangular, quadrangular, or poly- 

 gonal in transverse section, the sides appearing concave, the 

 ano-les pointed. The latter are occasionally produced into thin 

 membranes, which stretch across the whole or a part of a mesh. 

 The general impression left on the observer's mind is that of a 

 progressive rarefaction of the stroma by the growing contents of 

 the alveoli ; and this impression may be unconditionally accepted, 

 at least as regards the earliest stages in the development of can- 

 cer, when the growth is still confined within the lobules of the 

 gland. At a later period, when the degenerated lobes and 

 lobules have coalesced to form nodules of larger size, and these 

 have already begun to penetrate b}^ infiltration into the neigh- 

 bouring tissues, a formation of new trabeculse takes place in the 

 older parts of the tumour ; this begins by solitary spindle-shaped 

 cells becoming obliquely stretched across the larger alveoli, where 

 they serve as guiding or nuclear centres for the subsequent appo- 

 sition of the basis-substance of connective tissue. 



The soft form of glandular cancer has hitherto been found in 

 the salivary gland, the mammary gland, the testicle, ovary, pro- 

 state, thyroid body, nasal mucous membrane, and liver. In what 

 measure, if at all, soft cancer of the stomach may originate in the 

 follicular structures must remain for the present an open question. 



The soft glandular cancers are extremely malignant ; parti- 

 cularly because they undermine the general nutrition of the 

 organism more rapidly than any of the other forms, and so prove 

 fatal by the cachexia to which they give rise. Metastatic deposits 

 are only found as a rule in the corresponding lymphatic glands. 



§ 156. The telengiectatic carcinoma (a variety of the so- 

 called fungus hsematodes). Inasmuch as blood-vessels form an 

 integral part of the stroma of every gland, and this stroma, as 

 we have seen already, undergoes direct conversion into the 

 stroma of the glandular cancer, it is easy to see that every such 

 cancer must, at least in its earlier stages, contain blood-vessels. 

 In a general way these vessels may be said to share the fate of 

 the stroma, i.e. they undergo rarefaction so long as epithelial 

 proliferation is in the ascendant, and when its products are 

 softened and disintegrated by fatty metamorphosis, the vessels 



