Natural Life History Research Articles

Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment and Prognosis

The third edition of this text reflects favorably its acceptance since the first edition was introduced in 1947. Upon comparison with the previous editions, changes and revisions are noticeable, including additional and appropriate reference documentation and comments on newer therapeutic developments. In the Preface the authors state that the text is provide the specialist— the practicing physician—the medical student, with information on the natural life history—and a guide to early diagnostic means—therapeutic possibilities—and prognosis of a given cancer patient. This is a teaching text. The authors are, respectively, a pathologist and a radiotherapist, and these areas are covered with an authoritative flair. While but two authors are listed, they acknowledge considerable assistance from distinguished physicians outside their disciplines; chapters were contributed by Michael B. Shimkin, MD, of Bethesda and by Harvey R. Butcher, Jr., MD, of St. Louis. The charts and diagrams in the text are clear and subserve

Cylindromata of major and minor salivary gland origin.

ACCURATE diagnosis and adequate treatment of neoplastic disease requires knowledge of its natural life history. While this information is currently available for carcinoma of the breast, uterus, colon, and stomach, some neoplasms of salivary gland origin are not properly identified as malignant tumors. Management of this latter group often leads to a sequence of events where initial optimism soon gives way to doubt and, eventually, pessimism colors the treatment and prognosis. Arising from major and minor salivary gland tissue of the head and neck region is a tumor described variously as cylindroma, adenoid cystic carcinoma, myoepithelioma, cellular mixed tumor, adenocarcinoma Grade I, and even basal cell carcinoma with hyaline stroma. That the clinical and morphological features of this entity are poorly understood is evidenced by the fact that occasionally this lesion has been classified 1 and treated 2 as a benign tumor. Our experience with 18 cases, and that of

Acute pancreatitis; the fate of the patient surviving one or more acute attacks.

IN spite of a great deal of attention that has been devoted to the subject of pancreatitis in recent years, many gaps exist in understanding of this disease. The purpose of this study was to follow the progress of a group of patients who had survived one or more attacks of acute pancreatitis, and thus to help clarify the natural life history of the disease if untreated and evaluate the results of various forms of surgical therapy used.Criteria for DiagnosisFor a study of this type, criteria for the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis were essential. This diagnosis was accepted . . .

RATIONALE OF TREATMENT OF TOXIC AND INFECTION PSYCHOSES

The clinical interpretation of toxic and exhaustion psychoses rests, primarily, on psychobiologic principles. Of these principles, the modern physiologic concept that living things are transformers, rather than generators of matter and energy, gives us understanding of the term mechanism when applied in conservation of energy, on which concept treatment must be founded. The neural mechanisms with their baffling complexities, their problems of functioning, their clinical interpretations, etc., all require familiarity with the physiology of nervous reactions and afford the most inviting field for the research worker today, especially when in this great world's war, the clinical problems in this special field are overwhelming both in intricacy and in numbers. We must, in our approach to the understanding of these problems, keep in mind the three essential points of Sherrington,1as regards nervous reactions, namely, first, the natural history of cell life; second, the conduction of the nervous impulse more