Rhabdomyoma of the parotid gland / by T. Mitchell Prudden.

  • Prudden, T. Mitchell.
Date:
[1883]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rhabdomyoma of the parotid gland / by T. Mitchell Prudden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion will be still more satisfactory in the future. The fatality of gastros¬ tomy has, no doubt, been in great measure due to the fact that it has often been performed only at the eleventh hour, when the patient was almost moribund ; “ a species of refined cruelty reflecting no credit on surgery,” to use tlie words of an authority venerated on both sides of the Atlantic.^ OEsophagostomy has necessarily a much narrower range of .usefulness ; it is always more or less a “ leap in the dark,” and its effects may occasionally be brilliant ; it is, after all, an operation more likely to find favour with the adventurous surgeon than with the careful practitioner. In cases of syphilitic origin, however, when the stricture is at the upper part of the gullet, oesophagostomy offers a very good prospect of success, as the disease is much more frequently limited in its extent than either cancer or the lesions produced by corrosive fluids. As regards internal oesophagotomy, increased experience will probably show, that, though its immediate results are not so frequently fatal, its ultimate effects, when successful, are less beneficial to the patient than those of either gastrostomy or oesophagostomy. Article X. Rhabdomyoma of the Parotid (jland. By T. Mitchell Pruddex, M.D., Director of the Physiological and Pathological Laboratory of Association of the College of l^hysicians and Surgeons, New York; Lecturer on Normal Histology in Yale Medical College. The interest and importance which have always attended the study of the rare and complex tumours called Rhabdomyoma, or Myoma striocellu- lare, won greatly in significance when their characters and occurrence were adduced by Cohnheim in support of the very suggestive theory of the embryonal origin of tumours. The fact that tumours, composed wholly or in part of such a highly or¬ ganized type of tissue as striated muscle, should be formed in organs like the kidney, testicle, etc., where such tissue does not properly belong, was entirely inexplicable on any of the earlier hypotheses concerning the eti- ology of tumours. If, however, it be assumed that, at some time during the process of differentiation of tissues and formation of organs in the embryo, some cell or cluster of superfluous cells should form and then cease to develop, or become misplaced in such a way that its further devel¬ opment is rendered for the time impossible, and should remain quiescent but still endoM'ed with all the potentialities of embryonal cells, until at 1 Gross, System of Surgery, ttth ed., 1882, vol. ii. p. 495.