Cancer is widely regarded as a modern disease. Many of us think nostalgically about times centuries ago, before the industrial revolution, when the air was clean of pollutants and the water everywhere was good for drinking. We think of the times when our ancestral fathers fed off the land and were free of diseases. But that is hardly the case.
In 1932 anthropologist Louis Leakey discovered clear signs of bone cancer in a prehistoric jawbone. To this day there are still arguments about the exact time period from which this bone originated but since this is a fully fossilized petrified bone, we're satisfied with the definition “prehistoric“ as proof of primordial cancer.
The earliest written documentation of cancer is found in ancient Egypt. Various sources state various years, but this was anywhere between 3000 and 1500 BC, when an Egyptian doctor documented the different illnesses, his patients suffered. Among them, he wrote about what could only be described today as breast cancer. At the time there was no known cure, as stated on the papyrus.
Sir Percival Pott was the first to associate cancer with inflammation caused by external exposure to carcinogens. “He observed an unusually high incidence of skin sores on the scrotum of men working as chimney sweeps in London.“ Source
A German surgeon named Karl Thiersch was the first to prove that cancer spreads through malignant cells.
In the 19th century, when physician Rudolph Virchow discovered that cancer cells form from human cells another piece was added to the puzzle. From there, the road to treatment was short.
In 1882 William Halsted performed the first ever radical mastectomy to treat breast cancer. He was also the one to introduce the use of thin rubber gloves and local anesthesia.
As science and technology evolved and expanded, so did our knowledge on cancer. In 1903, S. W. Goldberg and Efim London were the first to cure cancer with radiation therapy. Later on, scientists discovered that cancer can also be caused by viruses and chemicals. But the progress was anything but linear. In 1926 and noble prize was given to Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger for his discovery of a so-called cancer-causing worm. “Johannes Fibiger suspected that a roundworm cause cancer […] However, it later turned out that the primary cause of the cancer was a lack of vitamin A“. Source
But finally in 1953, we achieved the first complete cure of a solid human tumor by way of chemotherapy.
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