CHAPTER XII 



ON THE STRUCTURE OF AN ALVEOLAR SARCOMA OF THE 

 HUMAN BREAST AND ITS MEANING 



THE tumour, when cut in half and made ready to be placed in a 

 museum, 1 had the appearance shown in Fig. 30. In the catalogue I 

 described it thus : ' Half of a breast, the seat of a large growth, 

 which contains an irregular cavity. The nipple is not retracted. A 

 second mass of growth, as large as a tangerine orange, is present. 

 Its situation suggests that it arose in one of the axillary glands. 

 The microscope showed a typical alveolar sarcoma.' The cavity 

 was the result of a central liquefaction in the tumour, and the 

 opening marked ' i ' was caused by an exploratory incision made 

 shortly before the tumour was removed by Mr. Owen from a middle- 

 aged woman. 



Beneath the breast the pectoral muscle was infiltrated with 

 nodules of the growth. 



Sections of this tumour made for the purpose of diagnosis and 

 demonstrations in the laboratory showed the structure characteristic 

 of those sarcomas in which the capillary network, with more or less 

 fibrous tissue, remains to subdivide the cut surface into alveoli, 

 which are filled by small groups of cells. The cells in this tumour 

 accord with Billroth's description of alveolar sarcoma, having ' one 

 or more nuclei with glistening nucleoli.' 2 These average ' good class- 

 room ' preparations showed little beyond these points and that the 



1 The preparation was described by me in the catalogue of St. Mary's Hospita 

 Museum, first additional volume, 1897, No. 1,465 A. The tumour, with additiona 

 details, I described in the Cent.fiirBakt.^ May 10, 1895, and in the British Medical 

 Journal, April 6, 1895. 



2 Billroth, 'Surgical Pathology,' English Translation, 1884, p. 719. 



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