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APPENDIX B

 

 

PICK: IN THE “DISCUSSION ZU DEN VORTRAGEN UBER DIE AETIOLOGIE DES CARCINOMS.”

 

 

IN “BERLINE KLIN. WOCHENSCHRIFT,” 1905, NO 13. ABSTRACT OF THE REMARKS     CONTRIBUTED BY THE PATHOLOGIST DR. L. PICK TO THE DISCUSSION ON THE ETIOLOGY OF CANCER, IN BERLIN, MARCH 15, 1905.

 

DR. PICK said the discussion which they were that day experiencing on this subject was, indeed, only a link in an almost endless chain of similar discussions and works in all civilized countries, and the question arose of itself, in what the great difficulties in the way of a solution of the problem consisted. Was it possible for us, with our present methods, to solve it at all? The certain decision whether malignant disease were due to a parasite or not was in our present position (1905) impossible. We were compelled to found our views on the etiology of cancer on morphological grounds, and in his contribution to the discussion Pick placed the question in this form : Was a parasite etiology of the cell-growth of cancer really necessary ? He then referred to the cancerous epithelioma of the chorionic villi (trophoblast), malignant chorio­epithelioma. This was a form of epithelial growth, which took its origin from the epithelial covering of the chorionic villi, or from chorionic cells in migration, and occasion­ally was so malignant that hardly an organ of the body was protected from destruction, or the formation of metastases in it. It was a very remarkable, but quite certain, fact that the ordinary chorionic epithelium in

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