File:Evolution and disease (1890) (14577381880).jpg

Identifier: evolutiondisease00blan (find matches)
Title: Evolution and disease
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Bland-Sutton, John, Sir, 1855-1936
Subjects: Diseases Medical genetics Abnormalities, Human Animals Disease Congenital Abnormalities
Publisher: New York : Scribner & Welford
Contributing Library: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School

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ians, as well as from my own observations,very rare in domesticated and wild mammals. The cause of the extreme frequency of cancer in onecase, and its absence in another, may be in a measureexplained by certain peculiarities in structure and glanddistribution. The question is far too extensive to beadequately considered in such a work as this, andwhen I have pushed my investigations further I hope todeal with it in a systematic manner. Before leaving this subject it will be interesting todescribe a specimen illustrating the close relation whichexists between glands and cancer. In the section de-voted to supernumerary mammae, I drew attention to therelation existing between cutaneous recesses and glan- TUMOURS AND CANCERS. 247 dular organs, and used this as an explanation of theinordinate number of teats found within the pouch ofsome opossums. It is a remarkable fact that one of themost typical specimens of cancer that has come undermy notice in a wild animal occurred in a short-headed
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Fig. 123.—The posterior half of a short-headed Phalanger. The pouch isoccupied by a cancer. (Nat. size.) phalanger (Belidens breviceps) (fig. 123). In this case thepouch was occupied by a tumour as big as the kernelof a filbert, and when we remember that the parts of thephalanger arc represented of natural size in the drawing,the tumour was relatively large. In order to appreciate 248 EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. the significance of this specimen, it should be studied inconjunction with the remarks on the marsupial pouchcontained on p. 171, et seq. SUMMARY.—To epitomise the facts briefly consideredin this chapter relative to tumours, from an evolutionistspoint of view, it may be stated that (excluding thosearising from accidental interference with the function ofsecreting organs), some tumours arise as a result ofchange of function in organs, rendering some part ofthem useless ; others arise from the introduction intoan organism of bacteria which have by imperceptiblestages become slowl

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