NOMENCLATURE OF NEW-FORMATIONS. 5Q9 



you must remember that the manufacture of stearine was 

 not known at the time when the term steatoma first came 

 into use, and that the old observers never entertained the 

 notion, which the tumour teachers of the present day 

 cannot get out of their heads that a steatoma * was a 

 stearine- or indeed a fatty, tumour at all. 



The improved nomenclature which was introduced at 

 the commencement of this century, was based more upon 

 comparisons which were instituted between the new-for- 

 mations and individual parts or tissues of the body. The 

 term " medullary fungus" (Markschwamm) originally 

 arose out of the idea that medullary cancers originated 

 in the nerves and resembled nervous matter in their com- 

 position. These comparisons have, however, until re- 

 cently been always very arbitrary, because they were 

 founded upon more or less rough resemblances in exter- 

 nal appearance, without a due appreciation of the more 

 delicate peculiarities of structure, and particularly of the 

 really histological composition. 



Recently attempts have been made, and here and there 

 even with great affectation, to make use of normal struc- 

 tures as aids in terminology. Many attach a certain de- 

 gree of importance to this, and consider it more scientific 

 to say epithelioma, where others say cancroid or epithe- 

 lial cancer. Thus in France great stress has, it is well 

 known, been laid upon calling sarcomata fibro-plastic tu- 

 mours, because Schwann and his followers looked upon 

 caudate corpuscles as directly producing the fibres of con- 

 nective tissue which, in my opinion (p. 70), is an error. 

 But in spite of these errors we must consider the histo- 

 logical point of view as the true one, only it is not, I 

 think, advisable, in accordance with this principle, at 

 once to proceed to create new names for everything, and 



* The ancients called any firm tumour (e. g., an enchondroma) a steatoma. 

 From a MS. Note by the Author. 



