Protozoa and carcinoma : read in the section of pathology at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, held in Nottingham, July 1892 / by Sheridan Delépine.

  • Delépine, Sheridan, 1855-1921.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Protozoa and carcinoma : read in the section of pathology at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, held in Nottingham, July 1892 / by Sheridan Delépine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    morphological characters and to their reactions with various reagents. I found, like others before me, that they could be extremely well seen without the help of any special method of preparation. In sections fixed with osmic acid it was easy to recognise a number of forms : 1. A young coccidium or psorosperm looks much like a nucleus with sometimes a large nucleolus (the previous stages are difficult to make out when embedded in a cell). 2. Larger organisms are ovoid in shape and contain a mass of very coarsely granular protoplasm, in which there is a more or less distinct nucleus-like body. Many of the granules stain black with osmic acid, mahogany brown with iodine, pink with fuchsin, and so on. 3. Most of these oviform bodies have a distinct capsule with double outline, and among the encapsulated bodies there are some which stain deeply with fuchsin. 4. Some of the parasites contain one or several long coiled filaments. 5. Very large bodies, two or three times the size of the others, with comparatively small granules sometimes arranged Fig. 1.—Endogenous cell formation in a secondary squamous epithe- lioma of a lymphatic gland. The nucleus of the mother cell is partly between the encysted daughter cell and the observer, so that, although flattened, it still looks round, x 1100. in radiating lines, and with a large indistinct nucleus, are found here and there among the other parasites. These various forms have been described and depicted in the paper already alluded to above4 and in a later communication. I now looked for similar appearances in epithelial tumours, using the same methods of preparation and keeping in mind the possibility of important differences between the parasite of the rabbits' tumours and the possible one that might be found in human tumours. I have elsewhere6 shown why (though thinking that the parasitic origin of cancer is, on theoretical grounds, not probable) it is possible to suppose * Trans. Path Soc, vol. xli, p. 346, Plates XXI, XXII, XXIII. * Trans. 7th Int. Cong. Hyg. andDcm., British Medical Jouknai., 1891, ii. p. 362.