Pathology of Tumours (1948)

This item is a 1948 pathology textbook by R. A. Willis, not an original study. The available text contains the title page, a scanned table of contents, and two pages (363 and 364) from the chapter on carcinoma of the trachea, bronchi and lung. There the author reviewed possible causes of lung cancer that other writers had described. On asbestosis, the author wrote that it had been reported together with carcinoma in a few cases, citing Holleb and Angrist. The author noted that a causal link had been suggested for three reasons: several of the patients were young, most of the cancers were of the squamous type, and some cancers arose in several places, apparently linked to precancerous squamous changes. The author concluded that the number of cases was still too small to allow any definite conclusion. This excerpt names no asbestos fiber type and does not discuss mesothelioma. In the same section, the author described the evidence on silicosis as inconclusive. The author also wrote that comparisons of the smoking habits of lung cancer patients and control cases gave strong grounds for suspecting smoking, but could not give incontrovertible proof.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

From J-M's medical library

This copy comes from the Johns-Manville medical library. J-M listed it in its medical library index as no. 005281.

We publish pages from a book for research and commentary: it shows what the medical literature in a leading asbestos company's own library said on the subject, and when. Our summary above is our own reading of it. The copyright stays with the publisher.