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Humoral theory. Hippocrates believed that the body had 4 humors (body fluids): blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. When the humors were balanced, a person was healthy. The belief was that too much or too little of any of the humors caused disease. An excess of black bile in various body sites was thought to cause cancer.
Mar 12, 2022 · Finally, Paulus Aegineta, a 7th Century AD physician and encyclopaedist, further described findings in regards to cancer treatment. Aegineta mostly followed the teachings of Galen, choosing to believe that cauterization of the entire area caused more harm to the patient in the long term due to increased chances for infection and longer healing time.
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- 19th Century
- 20th Century
- 21st Century
1840s
1. “Anesthesia,” the idea of making a patient unaware of pain, was first applied in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.
1850s
1. After reading multiple similar reports, German researcher Rudolf Virchow published his report about a patient whose autopsy revealed massive amounts of white, milky cells above the red blood upon examination of blood specimens. He named the condition leukemia from the Greek word leukos, meaning white. 2. Virchow discovered that cancer was, in its simplest form, the uncontrolled growth of cells, called hyperplasia. This led to the term neoplasia (neomeaning new), a term that is still used t...
1860s
1. A Scottish surgeon named Joseph Lister recalled Louis Pasteur’s experiment, which found that meat exposed to air began to ferment. But the air was okay in a sterilized, sealed jar of meat broth. Lister realized bacteria would affect an open wound the same way, so he tried treating an open wound with an antibacterial agent and then closed it. It healed and resulted in another major discovery in the treatment of cancer: infection control.
1900-1910s
1. Marie Curie identified radium, named from Latin for light. 2. The surgical community discovered that cancer recurrence was determined by whether the cancer had spread prior to a mastectomy, and how far, not by how invasive the surgery was.
1920s -1930s
1. Radiation therapyexploded in the United States; the extensive side effects of radium surfaced among workers – both acute, including skin, bone and tooth necrosis, and long-term, including cancers of the blood and sarcomas. 2. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the establishment of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
1940s
1. Sidney Farber, a pathologist turned clinician researched and tested chemicals (named chemotherapy) that showed promising results in treating childhood leukemia. 2. A Greek pathologist named George Papanikolaou invented pap smear tests were invented to prevent cervical cancer. 3. Cancer became highly publicized and politicized – finally a topic of international discussion, resulting in abundant funding for research.
2000s
1. Historical medicine and research paired with modern science started to show an impact in the mortality rates of cancer. 2. 24 new cancer drugs were brought to market. 3. Targeted therapies showed promise but were not reliable. 4. Researchers shifted back to the focus on prevention and underlying causes of cancer. 5. The Human Genome Project(sequencing of the normal human genome) was complete, allowing the sequencing of gene mutations for cancer types to be studied. By 2009, researchers rev...
2010s
1. Major strides have been made in the areas of immunology, metabolism, gene regulation, and cancer metastasis. 2. Clinical trialsfor targeted cancer treatments are available worldwide and offer opportunity for patients to benefit and for researchers to forge ahead in finding a cure based on what proves to be effective. 3. Procedures such as “image-guided intraoperative radiotherapy” (only available at UVA Cancer Center) allow patients with early stage breast cancer to have surgery and radiat...
May 5, 2021 · Conventional wisdom has long held that cancer rates in medieval Europe, before the rise of industrial pollution and tobacco smoking, must have been quite low. But a new study of individuals buried ...
May 5, 2024 · In 2022 alone, there were about 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million cancer deaths globally. We clearly have a long way to go. We clearly have a long way to go. Journal information: Cancer
Feb 28, 2024 · Leap years exist because we need to play a bit of astronomical catch up. ... the Romans added an extra 27- or 28-day month called Mercedonius every few years. Due ... The math used in this story ...
Dec 27, 2010 · A rare tumor called a rhabdomyosarcoma was found on the face of a Chilean child who lived sometime between A.D. 300 and 600. ... the spike in lung cancer caused in later decades by the popularity ...
