Excerpt from The British Medical Journal, Vol. 1: Being the Journal of the British Medical Association; January to June, 1870

Gentlemen, - Tu the preceding Lectures, I have described enlarge ments of the liver, the spleen, and the kidney, as causing abdominal tumours. To-day I shall speak of a tumour in the abdomen, not due to the enlargement of an organ.

This photograph was taken from a woman lately in the Hospital; and the preparation on the table, removed from the woman's abdomen after death, is the tumour which caused the appearance represented in the photograph. I shall first read an abstract of the case, and then tell you what the tumour was supposed to be during life, the grounds for that opinion, and how far the opinion was verified after death.

M. O., aged about 36, widow, was admitted on July 8th. The patient had good health until the commencement of growth of the tumour. She was married at 19, and had seven children. Her husband died three years ago. The catamenia had always been regular. Six and a half years since, a few days after the birth of a still born child, the patient was seized with violent gnawing pain in the right hip, especially severe when walking or standing. This pain lasted three or four weeks, and then left the hip and settled in the right knee. There was neither redness nor swelling about the joints. The pain in the knee left her two or three months before her last confinement (four years ago) but afterwards it returned worse than ever, and continued to the present time unchanged in character and seat. The child born four years ago is healthy and still living. While recovering from this confinement, she observed a lump in her side. It was situated about midway between the cartilages of the ribs and the crista ilii, and in the nipple line, or a little outside it. Its size, when first noticed, was about that of a cricket-ball. It was intensely hard, but not tender. She heard the surgeon who attended her remark that it was probably a bony tumour. It was quite fixed. For about twelve months it did not increase in size; nor had she any pain, except in the knee. After this, the tumour began to increase. Neither at this nor at any sub sequent time did she observe anything wrong with her urine; it has never been thick or bloody.

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