In the last of Paget's three classic papers,1 he expressed the conviction that there is an intimate relationship between the disease which has come to bear his name and the formation of malignant tumors. This belief was based on the fact that among his twenty-three personally observed patients with the disorder, five of the eight who were traced to the end died from malignant disease of some kind.
The tumor of only one of these patients was definitely an osteosarcoma, although that of another patient was probably of this nature. Paget says, concerning the first:
The upper third of the radius was involved in a large ovoid mass of pale grey and white soft cancerous substance, similar to that of the nodules in the pleurae and mediastinum, but with growths of bone extending into it. Some nodules of similar cancerous substance were imbedded in the bones of the vault