Primary Carcinoma of the Lung

Abstract

The interest in primary carcinoma of the lung aroused in the last decade by the increase, real or apparent, in its incidence, has been greatly stimulated in the last few years by the recognition of its identity with a disease long known among the miners of the Erzgebirge as Bergkrankheit. Although cancer of the lung is not often mentioned in the older literature, its symptoms were noted as early as the sixteenth century by Johannes Agricola. It is also mentioned by Morgagni, who in 1766 first described the pathology of pulmonary tumors and gave a full autopsy record in which we can at present recognize the description of carcinoma of the lung. Huguenin, in his monograph of four hundred pages, credits Corvisart and Boerhave with the first clinical description of this disease, while Bayle is given credit for having isolated cancer from the chaos of pulmonary phthises in 1800. Corvisart, however, antedates Bayle, having published a case two years earlier. Laennec in 1819, in his De l9auscultation mediate, first described pulmonary cancer as “encephaloid of the lung” and gave as exact a description of the physical signs as was possible without the x-ray or bronchoscope. Stokes in Diseases of the Chest, London, 1837, stated that frequent and severe bronchitis, resisting the usual methods of treatment, is suspicious of malignant tumor. He also gave an account of the physical signs and the qualities of the sputum, and differentiated between these signs and those due to aneurysm.