Its Terminations, besides discussion of the inflammatory stasis, and resolution, are:

1. Abiding of the 'products in their primitive crude condition, or else disruption, wasting, textural conversion.

We have here, first, to advert to the textural conversion of consolidated fibrinous exudates, to gluten-yielding fibroid textures which may spring up as a reinforcement of similar stromata already in existence. Secondly, we have to mention the development of embryonic cancer elements out of a fluid exudate, as represented in inflammatory hypertrophy, - increase of volume of the new growth. Both may concur with deliquescent, pus-like, ichorous exudates, and, emphatically, with genuine pus-exudate.

2. Suppuration, ichorous production, - the most ordinary termination. It runs either an acute or a chronic course, with or without simultaneous granulations, possessing the character of a rapidly developed new growth - representing certain lax, bleeding, easily suppurating, sloughing, fungus-like vegetations upon the cancerous ulcer. This process takes place either in the depths of the growth, in a shut space, as so-termed occult cancer; or upon the free surface of the body or of a mucous cavity, as so-called apert or open cancer. This last is, for the most part, marked by a funnel- or crater-like, deeply-extending base, with an elevated, mammillated brink.

Ichorous destruction of a cancer is very commonly followed by fugitive reproduction of the fungus upon the base of the ulcer, by the accumulation of cancerous matter in its vicinity, by cancerous degeneration of the implicated lymphatic glands, and, lastly, by the translation of cancer to other organs.

Even independently of suppuration, and without its concurrence, the necrosis of cancerous growths, both small and great, is not unfrequent.

Ulcerating and necrosing cancer - cancer-ichor - besides its corroding property is marked by a very disgusting, penetrating fetor. This is, no doubt, essentially due to the sulphur and phosphorus of the broken-up protein and fatty constituents of the tumor, especially when exposed to the air.

We have here still to advert to one other important phenomenon. In cancers of the most different structure - in all cancers - we meet, not rarely, with a yellow substance, sometimes scattered in points, sometimes permeating the texture as straightened or serpentine, ramified striae, interlaced to form a mesh- or network, or, on the other hand, imbedded in considerable masses. It is a yellow, brittle, consistent, - or a soft, friable, unctuous, glutinous substance, which, if closely examined, is found to consist either of an amorphous blastema, dotted here and there with minute molecules, and interspersed with misshapen nuclei and with more or fewer of the elementary cells of cancer, - or else chiefly scattered or grouped elementary granules (or fat-molecules), of the elementary cells of cancer replete with the same elementary granules, and lastly of fat-drops.

This substance constitutes, in the aforesaid mesh- or network, the so-called reticulum of Johannes Muller, who, regarding it as essentially prolific of cancer-cells, founded upon its presence a new species, under the denomination of cancer reticulatum.

On this point we cannot quite agree with Johannes Muller, the said reticulum not being confined to a single species of cancer, but occasionally met with in every form of the disease.

We hold it to be, generally speaking, a solidified product of inflammation destined, earlier or later, to break up, its protein-substances along with the contained cancer-cells undergoing fatty conversion. We look upon this process as both interesting and important, inasmuch as, from its original foyer in the said substance, it gradually evokes a similar process throughout the cancerous growth. This is particularly the case where the substance possesses the reticular form, so as to master the cancerous parenchyma at all points. It is certain, however, that the cancer-blastema itself undergoes the very same transformation, and that spontaneously.

Cancers for the most part prove fatal, sooner or later, by their exhausting effects. The anaemia, emaciation, and eventual exhaustion are the result of the luxurious growth of a single tumor, or of the development of a multitude of smaller tumors, or of hemorrhage or ulceration. Moreover, cancer, like other heterologous growths, kills through mechanical hindrance to the function of vital organs which it may have made its abode - for example, the brain. Acute, violent cancer-production rapidly destroys life, through the prefatory and attendant hyperemia of important organs. Suppurating cancers become deadly through infection of the blood, and pyaemia.

However seldom the extirpation of cancer proves successful, its spontaneous cure is a still greater rarity. So favorable a result can only be brought about either by the progressive destruction, necrosis, and partial rejection of the tumor, or else by its more rapid death and expulsion; a circumscribing suppuration isolating it from the healthy textures - (mammary, uterine cancer).

Other Processes Of Cure

Other Processes Of Cure present, however, greater interest, bearing the character of an involution, a decadency of the cancer. Such are:

1. Saponification of cancer, a metamorphosis usually evoked by the conversion before alluded to of the substance constituting the reticulum. It partly consists in the liberation of fats, or in the conversion of protein substances into fat, with consecutive emulsive and saponaceous blending. This process, the above designation of which is warranted by a series of minute examinations, attaches chiefly to the encephaloid, medullary carcinoma, so remarkable for its proportion of fats and of mutable crude albumen, and occurs more especially in the liver and the womb.

2. Decadency, wasting of the tumor, with condensation, solidification of its blastema, liberation of salts of lime in the shape of free molecule, and cell-incrustation. It affects in particular the denser cancers provided with a solid blastema (intercellular substance), - the firmer medullary and the fibrous cancers. The ossification and cretefaction of inflammatory products in cancer often gives the first impulse to this. Here again ossification and cretefaction (of the reticulum) are combined with fatty conversion.

Although carcinomata are, generally speaking, pre-eminently malignant new growths, still the degree of their malignancy is not the same in all, medullary carcinoma occupying the extreme point of malignancy, whilst colloid and the epithelial cancers are in this respect the mildest of all.