ETIOLOGY OF SARCOMA.
The causation of uterine sarcomata is involved in still greater ob scurity than that of fibromata of the uterus. Our knowledge concerning the causes of sarcomata is, if possible, less definite than it is in regard to the origin of fibroids and of carcinomata, because the number of cases thus far observed is too small to permit of satisfactory generalizations. By adding four cases reported by Simpson, two recently observed by my self, and eleven others to the fifty-six cases which Rogivue collected, I obtained seventy-three cases distributed as follows, with reference to the ages of the patients.
If these statistics justify any conclusion, it would be that the period of the menopause predisposes somewhat to uterine sarcomata, as it does to other malignant growths. I refer for the rest to what was said of the value of such statistics under the etiology of fibroids, and to what will be said on the same subject, under carcinoma, the cases of which are at least more numerous.
Since some etiological importance has been attributed to the number of births and to sterility by some authors, I here append a table bearing on that question.
Among seventy-four cases of sarcoma (fifty collected by Rogivue, four by A. Simpson, two by Gusserow and seven by J. Clay) twenty-five were sterile, If it be desirable to deduce inferences from so few cases, the number of sterile patients is certainly striking, particularly since, at the age in which these new growths appeared in the above cases, sterility could hardly be regarded as the result of the sarcomatous . growths. The reverse is true of fibroids. The contrast, in this particular, between sarcomata and carcinomata, may be noted, for in cancerous uterine disease fecundity seems augmented before the development of the tumors.