Case of cancer of the tongue / by William Keith.

  • Keith, William, 1802 or 1803-1871.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of cancer of the tongue / by William Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CASE of CANCER OF THE TONGUE. By WILLIAM KEITH, M.D., SURGEON TO THE ROYAL INFIRMARY, ABERDEEN, AND LECTURER ON CLINICAL SURGERY. [FROM THE MONTHLY JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCE, NOVEMBER 1849.] Mrs M‘Hardy, aged sixty-six, from the Cabrach, of a pale complexion, aged expression of countenance, and slightly cachectic look, admitted July 3d 1849, with a large fungus occupying the posterior two-thirds of the tongue on the right side, ragged and ulcerous, and bleeding on the slightest touch. The fungus commences behind in the base of the tongue, just where the an¬ terior column of the veluin-palati touches it. In breadth it all but reaches the mesial line of the tongue, and terminates anteriorly at a point distant half an inch from the centre of the tip. Is afflicted with constant pain of a burning character in the tumour, aggra¬ vated by frequent and severe pains of a lancinating kind, darting through the ear, and extending over the whole right side of the head. Is almost starved, owing to the presence of the fungus rendering it difficult to swallow fluids, and impossible to get solids over at all. States that four years since she became aware one night of a warty excres¬ cence on her tongue, her attention having been drawn to it by feeling a taste in her mouth to which she had not previously been accustomed. A succession of these warty elevations, white to look at, arose from time to time around the first one. Until six months since the progress was comparatively slow; the whole then became massed into one fungoid tumour, which enlarged from week to week sensibly. More recently it has advanced with still greater rapidity, so that the growth of the past three weeks has equalled that of three preceding months. She has been afflicted with pain from the very commencement of the disease —of a burning and lancinating character—shooting out at the right ear ; and her sufferings have all along been much aggravated by any attempt to take food—which, on many occasions, had also the effect of causing considerable hemorrhage. In the course of the previous treatment she had been subjected to the influ¬ ence of mercury to the extent of salivation, with no advantage to the disease whatever. The only topical remedy employed had been lunar caustic, which had been freely and frequently applied to the fungus; the effect was in every instance to aggravate both the disease and her sufferings. SUTHERLAND AND KNOX, 23, GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH.