The  minute  structures,  equally  with  the  general  characters,  of  the
scirrhous  cancers  of  the  skin,  are,  in  everything,  conformed  with  those
a,lready  described  ;  and  the  characters  of  cancer-cells,  and  their  mode
of  disorderly  insertion  in  the  interstices  of  the  natural  tissues,  are  in
no  parts  more  distinct.'

In  general,  I  think  the  scirrhous  cancers  of  the  skin  have  a  chronic
course,  not  painful  or  soon  ulcerating  ;  but,  as  primary  diseases,  they
are  too  infrequent  for  a  general  history  of  them  to  be  written  at
present.  I  have  seen  only  four  examples  of  them  independent  of
previous  cancer  in  other  parts.     In  one  of  these  the  seat  of  disease  was

'  In  the  foregoing  account  I  have  not  had  in  Ti6\y  that  which  is  commonly  called
the  '  cancerous  tubercle  of  the  face,'  and  which  so  often  occurs  as  the  precedent  of  the
destrnctive  process  constituting  the  so-called  'cancerous '  or  '  cancroid  ulcer'  of  the  face
in  old  persons.  I  have  not  been  able  to  examine  minutely  one  of  those  tubercles
before  ulceration,  but  all  I  have  seen  of  the  materials  forming  the  base  and  margins  of
the  ulcers  which  follow  them,  and  all  the  characters  of  their  progress,  make  me  believe
that  no  cancerous  structure,  whether  scirrhous,  epithelial,  or  any  other,  exists  in  them.
I  shall  revert  to  this  subject  in  the  lecture  on  Epithelial  Cancer.
624  SCIRRHOUS  CANCER  IN  THE  MUSCLES.
nearly  the  whole  skin  of  the  front  of  the  left  side  of  the  chest  of  a
woman  seventy-three  years  old  ;  in  another,  it  was  in  the  skin  of  the
leg,  in  the  form  of  cancerous  tubercles  abont  the  knee,  of  a  woman  set.
