History of cancer

The earliest evidence of cancer comes from Egyptian remains, revealing that such cancers as osteogenic sarcoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma and nasopharyngeal carcinomas existed in the year 2500 BC.

The ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana, which was written around 400-200 BC contains description of cancers and their treatment.

Hippocrates, 'the father of medicine’ was born in 460 BC, postulated that cancer was the result of too much black bile. There are lengthy descriptions of tumors in many of the 70 books of the Hippocratic Corpus.

He used the term ‘scirrhos’ (‘scirrhus’ in Latin) – means ‘hard’ – to describe tumors that feel hard on palpation.

By 400 BC, Greek doctors had written about tumors of the breast, stomach, skin, cervix and rectum.

Aulus Cornelius Celsus (25 BC- 50 AD), a Roman physician urged the use of caustic pastes and surgical excision of the lesion was at an early, superficial stage. As early as the Greco-Roma period (500 BC – AD 500), cancer was recognized and given a grave prognosis.

During Medieval period cancer was still believed to be caused by an excess of black bile.

Claude Gendron (born in 1663), French physician to the royal family, viewed cancer as a local not systemic disease as a hard, growing mass, untreatable with drugs and amenable to surgical excision.

French surgeon Henri Le Dran (1685-1770) and Jean Louis Petit (1708-1777) advocated wide surgical excision as well as removal of regional lymph bode and argue that the variety of caustic pastas commonly used to treat cancer were of no use.

Early nineteenth century, the first successful systemic cancer chemotherapy was published by Heinrich Lissauer, who reported remissions in tow patients with leukemia using Fowler’s solution, a then common cureo0all based on arsenic.

The use of radiation therapy in the treatment of cancer first occurred in 1896; by 1905 the first patient with carcinoma of the uterus was treated with radium. In 1913, the American Cancer Society was established as a voluntary organization dedicated to the control and the elimination of cancer in the United States.
History of cancer