The History of Cancer: Discovery and Treatment

Cancer may have been “discovered” and written about thousands of years ago. However, the disease itself has actually existed since before the evolution of humans.

It was first documented in Egypt about 5,000 years ago. Since that time, people from cultures all over the world have written about the disease and its potential treatments.

This article will look at what we know about the history of cancer. It will also talk about how our understanding of what causes cancer and how it can be treated has changed over time.

History of Cancer

• 3000 BCE: The world’s earliest known mention of cancer was found in a papyrus document from ancient Egypt. It described tumors found in the breast. The cancer was treated by destroying the tissue with a hot instrument called “the fire drill”—a technique we now call “cauterization.” Some writings have shown that the ancient Egyptians could distinguish between cancerous (malignant) and noncancerous (benign) tumors.
• 460 BCE: In ancient Greece, Hippocrates thought there were four fluids in the body that influenced health: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. He believed that having too much black bile in a part of the body caused cancer. For the next 1,400 years, people believed cancer was caused by too much black bile.
• 1628: William Harvey, physician to King James I of England, dissected animals and human cadavers to learn more about how the body worked. When he published a book about the circulatory system, it upended ancient ideas and opened the door for more research on the workings of the human body.
• 1761: Giovanni Morgagni of Padua published a book based on hundreds of autopsies he had performed on former patients of his, looking at both their clinical symptoms in life and his postmortem observations of their organs. This laid the groundwork for modern autopsies to determine the cause of someone’s death.
• 1775: A British surgeon named Percivall Pott discovered that testicular cancer was common in chimney sweeps. This was the first time a cancer was connected to an environmental cause.
• 17th century: The discovery of the lymphatic system led to new ideas about cancer. The lymphatic system includes the tissues, vessels, and organs that move a substance called lymph around your body. Lymph is an important part of your immune system. When the lymphatic system was discovered, it brought about the possibility that problems in this part of the body could cause cancer. This idea was called the lymph theory. It replaced Hippocrates’ theory about black bile and cancer.
• 1838: Johannes Mueller, a German pathologist, showed that cancer is made of cells, not lymph. Mueller’s student, physician Rudolf Virchow, figured out that all our cells—even cancerous ones—come from other cells. However, he thought cancer spread in the body “like a liquid.”
• 1860: A German surgeon named Karl Thiersch was the first person to prove that cancer spread through malignant cells.
• 1915: Katsusaburo Yamagiwa and Koichi Ichikawa at Tokyo University applied coal tar to the skin of rabbits, inducing cancer and showing that some substances are carcinogens or cancer-causing.
• 1962: James Watson and Frances Crick won a Nobel Prize for discovering the chemical structure of DNA.
• 1970s: Scientists discover oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes.
  

How Cancer Was Named

Although most people cite Hippocrates as the first person to use the word cancer, he actually used the Greek words karkinos and karkinoma when he wrote about tumors. These words were related to the Greek word for “crab” because Hippocrates thought the insides of the tumors looked like crabs.

The Roman physician Celsus was the first to translate the word into the Latin word “cancer.”

Current Progress

The 20th century was an exciting time in cancer research. Carcinogens, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and better ways to diagnose cancer were all discovered in these years. Some of the most important discoveries of the 20th century include:

• 1981: Japanese professor Takeshi Hirayama published the first research linking lung cancer to second-hand smoke. 
• 1982: Baruch S. Blumberg helped develop a vaccine against hepatitis B, a cause of liver cancer.
• 1989: The first gene therapy cancer treatments began to evolve.
• 1994: Scientists discovered the BRCA1 gene. This was the first known gene found to predispose a person to developing breast or ovarian cancer.
• 1999: Jan Walboomers and Michele Manos found evidence implicating human papillomavirus (HPV) to 99.7% percent of cervical cancers.
  

Today, we are still learning more about cancer. We have found ways to prevent and treat some forms of cancer and even cure others. Clinical trials have allowed scientists to test new ways to find and treat cancer. Some of this century’s notable discoveries so far include:

• 2006: The first vaccine against the HPV virus was approved in the United States.
  
• 2009: Researchers find that immunotherapy improves cure rates for children with neuroblastoma.
• 2011: Low-dose computed tomography (CT) scans help reduce lung cancer deaths by finding early-stage cancer in high-risk people.
• 2016: Researchers find evidence that a type of gene therapy called (CAR) T can produce remission in some people with B-cell hematologic cancers.
  
• 2021: The OncoKB, a genetic variant database, was recognized by the FDA as a tool for predicting drug responses in people with cancer. This will help oncologists find the best individual treatments for people with specific types of cancer.

Summary

Humans have known about cancer for millennia, but our modern understanding of cancer has only developed in the past few centuries. New advancements are being made all the time, and huge leaps have been made in the last few decades alone. This bodes well for the future of cancer treatments and therapies.

A Word From Verywell

How we look at cancer and its treatments has significantly changed in the last few centuries. Even decades ago, we had limited treatment options and less research. Learning about cancer and treatment history can be interesting when seeing how far we’ve come in such a short time. With new research and discoveries occurring all the time, the future of cancer research is an exciting topic.