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An Historical Overview: From Prehistory to WWII

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The Conquest of Cancer

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Abstract

Cancer has afflicted humanity from pre-historic times, though its prevalence has markedly increased in recent decades in unison with rapidly aging populations and, in the last half-century, increasingly risky health behavior in the general population and the increased presence of carcinogens in consumer products and in the environment. The oldest credible evidence of cancer in mammals consists of tumor masses found in fossilized dinosaurs and human bones from pre-historic times. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of cancer in dinosaurs emanates from a recent large-scale study that screened by fluoroscopy more than 10,000 specimens of dinosaur vertebrae for evidence of tumors and assessed abnormal vertebrae by computerized tomography (CT) [27]. Of the various species of dinosaurs surveyed, only cretaceous hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) that lived approximately 70 Ma ago exhibited tumors, and although most were benign (hemangiomas, desmoplastic fibromas, and osteoblastomas), malignant metastatic cancers also were detected in 0.2 % of specimens tested.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

– Socrates

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Benign vascular tumors.

  2. 2.

    Benign fibrous tumors of bone.

  3. 3.

    Rare benign bone tumors.

  4. 4.

    Essay-length. For instance, the “book” of Aphorisms is only 14,426 words-long in its English translation.

  5. 5.

    Precursors to today’s hospices.

  6. 6.

    Removal of the ovaries, adrenal glands, and hypophysis (or pituitary) gland, respectively.

  7. 7.

    Chronic lead poisoning by lead-containing wine first diagnosed in the Poitou region of France.

  8. 8.

    Mucosal-Associated Lymphoid Tissue that can lead to a low-grade non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

  9. 9.

    Bacillus Calmette Guerin; and attenuated Bacillus Bovis.

  10. 10.

    A uranium-rich mineral and ore.

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    Guy Faguet

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Faguet, G. (2015). An Historical Overview: From Prehistory to WWII. In: The Conquest of Cancer. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9165-6_2

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