Cancer frequently occurs in the lymphatic glands, sometimes as a primary, but more commonly as a secondary formation. The medullary is the ordinary variety, either in its genuine white form, or in association with melanosis; or sometimes combined with areolar cancer, or with cysts.

In the primary form, it especially attacks the glands of the lumbar plexus, and those in the mediastina; in both these positions it forms considerable tuberous growths, which, in the former, are known as retroperitoneal masses (Lobstein). Next in order of frequency, it occurs in the axillary, lumbar, and cervical glands. It is extremely probable that many of the cancerous structures imbedded in the cellular substance, and in which no starting-point from any other definite organ can be detected, on account of the integrity of the surrounding parts, originated in one or more lymphatic glands.

It appears in a secondary form when it does not develope itself in the lymphatic glands of a parenchymatous organ until that structure has already been affected with cancer. This cancer is sometimes very rapidly developed. In these cases the cancerous product is always distributed over a large, generally over the greatest, part of the system; it is also usually combined with acute cancer in other organs, especially the lungs and spleen.

The seat of the cancer is the parenchyma of the gland; but, at all events, in cases of secondary cancer, where the disease has been occasioned by the absorption of cancerous matter into the lymphatics, the cancer may also be seated in the lymphatic vessels of the gland.

5. Entozoa

We must here notice the animal found by Treutler in the bronchial glands, and named by Rudolphi, Filaria hominis bron-chialis.

3. Anomalies Of Contents

These have been already noticed in the preceding pages. We may add that, once in a medico-legal examination of the body of a man, aged about 35 years, the cause of whose death was unknown, but who probably died in convulsions, and in whose intestinal canal there had been a considerable development of gas, we found several of the mesenteric glands and of the lymphatics proceeding from the intestine in a state of emphysematous inflation, which we were the more inclined to attribute to the absorption of the intestinal gas, seeing that the character and appearance of the body generally were opposed to the view that there had been a development of gas as a consequence of putrefaction.