Animal Tumors of the Female Reproductive Tract

Spontaneous and Experimental

The chapters which comprise this book were prepared as part of a medical text, Pathology of the Female Genital Tract, which is intended for the obstetrician, gynecologist, and medical pathologist. In that context, we were con­ cerned to bring out the importance of the study of tumors of the female reproductive tract of animals, both as show­ ing the variety of spontaneous neoplasms that might affect the tract and as providing tumors capable of experimental reproduction. These chapters are published separately, since they contain information which may appeal to a range of readers who might not necessarily wish to acquire the full medical text-for example, to veterinary and comparative pathologists, cancer research workers, research workers in gynecology, experimental pathologists and endocrinologists, and possibly to others using animals in experimental and pharmaceutical studies. The survey of spontaneous tumors of the female repro­ ductive tract is largely concerned with tumors of the ovaries and uterus of domesticated animals, but attention is also given to laboratory animals, wild animals, and animals in zoos. The spontaneous tumors are well worth studying, not only because of their obvious clinical impor­ tance to veterinarians, but also because they might provide a stimulus for epidemiologic, etiologic, biologic, and ther­ apeutic investigations that may elucidate some of the problems related to their counterparts in humans.