Ancient history of cancer

The oldest credible evidence of cancer in mammals consists of tumor masses found in fossilized dinosaurs and human bones from pre-historic times.

Archaeologists have found human remains dating several thousand years back from which specimens have been interpreted as consistent with cancer. Such is the case of a female skull from the Bronze Age (1900–1600 B.C.E.) and Peruvian Inca skeletons from ca. 2,400 years ago.

Some of the earliest evidence of human bone cancer was found in mummies in ancient Egypt and in ancient manuscripts especially the Edwin Smith and George Ebers papyri They were written between 1500 and 1600 BC possibly based on material from thousands of years earlier. The world’s oldest recorded case of breast cancer hails from ancient Egypt in 1500 BC and it was recorded that there was no treatment for the cancer, only palliative treatment.

The Smith papyrus, possibly written by Imhotep the physician-architect who designed and built the step pyramid at Sakkara in the 30th century BC under Pharaoh Djoser, is believed to contain the first reference to breast cancer (case 45) when referring to tumors of the anterior chest.

The earliest cancerous growths in humans were found in Egyptian and Peruvian mummies dating back to 1500 BC. The oldest scientifically documented case of disseminated cancer was that of a 40- to 50-year-old Scythian king who lived in the steppes of Southern Siberia 2,700 years ago.

Hippocrates

The word cancer came from a Greek words karkinos to describe carcinoma tumors by a physician Hippocrates (460-370 B.C). In Greek this means a crab. He left a number of detailed descriptions of various diseases, including descriptions of lesions that had affected skin, breasts, stomach, cervix, and rectum. He also classified these into cancers that were in an early stage and others that were “occult.”

By the middle of the 20th century, scientists began solving the complex problems of chemistry and biology behind cancer. Scientists identified that cancer could be caused by chemicals (carcinogens), radiation, viruses and also inherited from ancestors. Most carcinogens were damage the DNA, which led to abnormal growth of cells. Ancient history of cancer

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