#history of cancer

[science-sculpt]

A Journey Through Time: Exploring the History of Cancer

Cancer, a disease that has plagued humanity for millennia, holds a complex and fascinating history. Our earliest encounters with cancer date back to ancient Egypt, where fossilized bone tumors and descriptions in medical papyri like the Edwin Smith Papyrus (3000 BC) offer chilling glimpses. The "Father of Medicine," Hippocrates (460-370 BC), coined the term "carcinoma," inspired by the crab-like appearance of tumors. While treatments were limited to cauterization and surgery, these early observations laid the groundwork for future understanding.

The Middle Ages saw a decline in scientific progress, with cancer often attributed to imbalances in bodily humors or divine punishment. However, glimpses of hope emerged. Arab physicians like Avicenna (980-1037 AD) categorized tumors and advocated for early surgical intervention. Microscopes revealed the cellular nature of tumors, and anesthesia paved the way for safer and more effective surgical interventions. The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed a surge in scientific curiosity. Percivall Pott (1714-1788) linked scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps to soot exposure, marking the first identification of an environmental carcinogen. Microscopes unveiled the cellular nature of tumors, and Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) proposed the revolutionary "cell theory," laying the foundation for our modern understanding of cancer as a cellular disease.

The 20th century ushered in a new era of cancer research and treatment. Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays in 1895 paved the way for radiation therapy, while the development of chemotherapy in the 1940s offered another weapon in the fight against cancer. Screening programs and early detection strategies emerged, leading to improved survival rates for certain cancers.

Today, we stand at the precipice of a new frontier in cancer research. The Human Genome Project has unlocked the secrets of our genetic makeup, leading to targeted therapies and personalized medicine. Immunotherapy, harnessing the body's own immune system to fight cancer, is showing remarkable promise. The future holds hope for even more effective and personalized treatments, potentially leading to a world where cancer becomes a chronic, manageable condition.

Cancer's history is a testament to human resilience and ingenuity. From ancient observations to modern marvels of science, the fight against this formidable foe has been a constant struggle. The fight against cancer is far from over, but the progress made through research and innovation is remarkable. As we delve deeper into the complexities of cancer biology and explore novel technologies, the future holds immense promise for improved prevention, early detection, and personalized treatments.

While the journey through history highlights the significant progress made, it also serves as a reminder of the ongoing battle and the unwavering hope for a future free from this formidable foe.

As we mark World Cancer Day today, February 4th, 2024, it's a stark reminder of the immense global challenge cancer presents. This year's theme, "Close the care gap: Access is equity," compels us to acknowledge and address the disparities in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and palliative care that exist across different communities and regions. But amidst the statistics and struggles, there's also hope – hope fueled by the tireless efforts of researchers, healthcare professionals, and individuals like you and me.

[marzipanandminutiae]

As someone who works with social history for a living, I feel like I’m the aggressive opposite of an anti-vaxxer

I fucking LOVE vaccines, friends. Give me the science stab. I’m so ready. it’s a beautiful day to not die of a Bajillion and one diseases that carried off like half the population before they had even reached age 10, and a significant portion before they made it to old age, 150 years ago

I go to the old cemetery. I see the vast numbers of infant and child and young adult graves. And then I go to my doctor and get injected with Potion of Fuck That Noise. This is beautiful and miraculous and I do not remotely understand how some people can reject it – not just for themselves, but for their children

[wisedreamerreview]

The Return of Click Relay

There are times when we can approach a serious issue with a bit of humor. The following was written in 2011.  There are many ways to draw attention to the ongoing battle against cancer. A disease that has taken a serious toll on so many. We have all in some way shape or form been touched by cancer. I know of many friends, coworkers and members of my church family that have fought the battle.…

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #31

August 9-16 2024

President Biden and Vice-President Harris announced together the successful conclusion of the first negotiations between Medicare and pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. For years Medicare was not allow to directly negotiate princes with drug companies leaving seniors to pay high prices. It has been a Democratic goal for many years to change this. President Biden noted he first introduced a bill to allow these negotiations as a Senator back in 1973. Thanks to Inflation Reduction Act, passed with no Republican support using Vice-President Harris' tie breaking vote, this long time Democratic goal is now a reality. Savings on these first ten drugs are between 38% and 79% and will collectively save seniors $1.8 billion dollars in out of pocket costs. This comes on top of the Biden-Harris Administration already having capped the price of insulin for Medicare's 3.5 million diabetics at $35 a month, as well as the Administration's plan to cap Medicare out of pocket drug costs at $2,000 a year starting January 2025.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have launched a wide ranging all of government effort to crack down on companies wasting customers time with excessive paperwork, hold times, and robots rather than real people. Some of the actions from the "Time is Money" effort include: The FTC and FCC putting forward rules that require companies to make canceling a subscription or service as easy as signing up for it. The Department of Transportation has required automatic refunds for canceled flights. The CFPB is working on rules to require companies to have to allow customers to speak to a real person with just one button click ending endless "doom loops" of recored messages. The CFPB is also working on rules around chatbots, particularly their use from banks. The FTC is working on rules to ban companies from posting fake reviews, suppressing honest negative reviews, or paying for  positive reviews. HHS and the Department of Labor are taking steps to require insurance companies to allow health claims to be submitted online. All these actions come on top of the Biden Administration's efforts to get rid of junk fees.

President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden announced further funding as part of the President's Cancer Moonshot. The Cancer Moonshot was launched by then Vice-President Biden in 2016 in the aftermath of his son Beau Biden's death from brain cancer in late 2015. It was scrapped by Trump as political retaliation against the Obama-Biden Administration. Revived by President Biden in 2022 it has the goal of cutting the number of cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years, saving 4 million lives. Part of the Moonshot is Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), grants to help develop cutting edge technology to prevent, detect, and treat cancer. The President and First Lady announced $150 million in ARPA-H grants this week focused on more successful cancer surgeries. With grants to Tulane, Rice, Johns Hopkins, and Dartmouth, among others, they'll help fund imaging and microscope technology that will allow surgeons to more successfully determine if all cancer has been remove, as well as medical imaging focused on preventing damage to healthy tissues during surgeries.

Vice-President Harris announced a 4-year plan to lower housing costs. The Vice-President plans on offering $25,000 to first time home buyers in down-payment support. It's believed this will help support 1 million first time buyers a year. She also called for the building of 3 million more housing units, and a $40 billion innovation fund to spur innovative housing construction. This adds to President Biden's call for a $10,000 tax credit for first time buyers and calls by the President to punish landlords who raise the rent by over 5%.

President Biden Designates the site of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot a National Monument. The two day riot in Illinois capital took place just blocks away from Abraham Lincoln's Springfield home. In August 1908, 17 people die, including a black infant, and 2,000 black refugees were forced to flee the city. As a direct result of the riot, black community leaders and white allies met a few months later in New York and founded the NAACP. The new National Monument will seek to preserve the history and educate the public both on the horrible race riot as well as the foundation of the NAACP. This is the second time President Biden has used his authority to set up a National Monument protecting black history, after setting up the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument on Emmett Till's 82nd birthday July 25th 2023.

The Department of The Interior announced $775 million to help cap and clean up orphaned oil and gas wells. The money will help cap wells in 21 states. The Biden-Harris Administration has allocated $4.7 billion to plug orphaned wells, a billion of which has already been distributed. More than 8,200 such wells have been capped since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2022. Orphaned wells leak toxins into communities and are leaking the super greenhouse gas methane. Plugging them will not only improve the health of nearby communities but help fight climate change on a global level.

Vice-President Harris announced plans to ban price-gouging in the food and grocery industries. This would be a first ever federal ban on price gouging and Harris called for clear "rules of the road" on price rises in food, and strong penalties from the FTC for those who break them. This is in line with President Biden's launching of a federal Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing in March, and Democratic Senator Bob Casey's bill to ban "shrinkflation". In response to this pressure from Democrats on price gouging and after aggressive questions by Senator Casey and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the supermarket giant Kroger proposed dropping prices by a billion dollars

[kittykatninja321]

Very deeply annoyed by the fanon idea that Talia treated Jason like a pet or a tool when he was catatonic, because when you actually read lost days you can clearly see that Talia is literally the only person who looked at Jason while he was catatonic and still saw a person and treated him like a person while everyone else around her (Ra’s and the doctor she hired) was ready to dismiss Jason as an empty shell

[atavist]

An ob-gyn in Virginia performed unnecessary surgeries on patients for decades. He took their reproductive organs, gave them false cancer diagnoses, and did other terrible harm. When his victims learned the truth, they fought back. Issue no. 146, DAMAGES, is now available: 

[Debra] requested her medical records and was stunned to find discrepancies with what Perwaiz had said to her during appointments. Most glaringly, she didn’t see any mention of precancerous cells on her cervix; the tests Perwaiz performed on her had come back normal. “If I was normal,” Debra said, “why did I have a surgery?”

There were other inconsistencies. One form from an appointment described Debra complaining of back and pelvic pain, which she told me she never did. Another document dated the day before her surgery stated that she “insisted on having those ovaries removed through the abdominal wall incision and not vaginally,” and that the “consent obtained after entirely counseling the patient [was] for abdominal hysterectomy.” In fact, she had requested the opposite surgical approach, and she recalled no such conversation with Perwaiz; the only time she’d spoken with him in the lead-up to her procedure was in passing in the hospital hallway.

Debra was sure she had a malpractice case. She went to several lawyers, but none of them would take her on as a client. “So many men—man after man saying, ‘You had a decent amount of care, and that’s all you’re afforded,’ ” she said. Frustrated, she came up with a new plan: “I said, ‘Alright, I’m going to learn how to sue this bastard myself.’ ”

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Source- Long Time Passing: Lives of Older Lesbians , edited by March Adelman PH.D

[greetings-inferiors]

Oh fuck

Apparently it’s not that bad but like… this is still awful

Now I understand why John was saying how he had a few worst days of his life recently, your brother getting cancer is awful

I really hope he gets better, I wish him all the luck, the green brothers are a gift to the internet and I can’t stand losing either of them

[wiiildflowerrr]

@Ashton5SOS: #FeelingNuts

18 September 2014

Taking part in a testicular cancer awareness campaign, which One Direction also promoted (love this):

[lttleghost]

I need hrt that gives me a tdick, slight sideburns but no other facial hair, a happy trail, and also makes my boobs MASSIVE

[constantly-deactivated]

Fruit extract may kill cancer.👇

BIG pharma will make sure this doesn’t get out to the masses. 🤔

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

El-P released his third solo studio album Cancer 4 Cure May 22, 2012

[wizard-irl]

Modern crystal healing: It opens your ~chakras~ you will attract ~abundance~ you will ~connect with the universe~

Medieval crystal healing: This shit makes you invisible, stops your periods from hurting, and makes your husband love you.

[corvidaedream]

me to my coworkers: when you request time off, you should not give the assistant dept head any additional info on why you're requesting it, it's none of her business and may be used against you

me requesting time off after my requests keep getting denied/overlooked the past few months: telling kelly explicitly that this one is an oncology appointment bc i want her to feel bad :)

[saturnsorbits]

Spent the whole afternoon at A&E and now all I can think about is Hospital AU Bakusquad…

Kirishima is in paediatrics.

A giant of a man, who everyone assumes (or hopes) is a physio or maybe even cardiology, but is most often seen with his hair in odd pigtails or butterfly clips, the tattoos on his forearms partially coloured in with bold felt tip. His mega-watt smile and calm, protective demeanour has both kids and parents seeking out his warmth and it isn’t uncommon to hear calls asking when ‘Dr Ei’ is going to be back on the ward. His office is littered with drawings from his patients and thank you cards from their parents - and it isn’t uncommon to see the odd scrawled phone number appear on the edge of a post it note that has somehow found its way into the pocket of his scrubs or coat.

Kaminari is a radiology tech.

He specialised because he thought he’d have a higher chance of seeing tits in his day-to-day work life, but stayed when he discovered his unexpected talent of reading radiographs. He’s got an eye for it, a weird knack that has his final year professor outright refusing to let him pivot to midwifery or plastics. He doesn’t mind so much these days. He’s the life of the department, with an easy going charisma that lures his, often anxious, patients back to relative calm and a manner that makes him more than approachable. ‘Ask Kaminari’ are often the first words spoken in front of a grainy X-Ray, his name the first on patients lips who have been seen by him before.

Mina is a specialist paramedic.

Trained to the highest level alongside Bakugo in med school, Mina decided surgery was just a little too detached for her liking - choosing instead to be the front line for those in an emergency. She likes the rush, the adrenaline filled afternoons that rely on her quick thinking and flawless bedside manner, but she also likes the breaks. Some of her favourite rides are booked appointments ferrying over the resident old dear for her routine CT scan and she’s a favourite amongst the frequent riders. The urgent care staff love her, knowing that they’re getting the best possible hand off when they see her bubblegum curls bounce through the doors, gloved hands gripping the stretcher as she reels off seamless histories and reassurances.

Sero is in orthopedics.

Having undergone his own elbow arthroplasty as a young adult, he knew exactly what he wanted to specialise in even before he started his first year of rotations. By his graduation, he had co-published a series of papers, pioneering a new innovative surgical fix for adolescent joint restoration that involved a veterinary technique using medical grade fishing wire. Despite this, he is humble to his core and steadfastly patient focuses where others may have sought out further research possibilities. His youthful demeanour makes him popular, despite his shyness, oh, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s absolutely smoking hot (and oblivious) either.

Bakugo is an ER Doctor.

It was certain that Bakugo was going far. Graduating top of his class, it was a sure thing that he would become one of the leading surgeons of his generation… Only for him to join the emergency department instead. Longing for a challenge, there are no safer hands in the department than his. Called in for the more harrowing and difficult cases, what he lacks in bedside manner is made up for easily in skill. He is blunt in demeanour and easy to anger, but ask any of the nurses in A&E and they’ll tell you all of that vanishes as soon as a child walks through the door. He has a cult following among the staff, nurses who long to crack his impenetrable shell and get to the gooey stuff they know is underneath and who can blame them? They’ve seen him shirtless in the overnight rooms.

[blueiscoool]

Ancient Egyptians Performed Cancer Surgery

Evidence from a 4,000-year-old skull suggests ancient Egyptian doctors were handy enough to try surgically removing tumors from their patients.

A pair of ancient Egyptian skulls, both thousands of years old, belonged to some of history's earliest known cancer patients, according to a study published Wednesday.

The skulls had cut marks around cancerous growths — providing evidence that ancient Egyptians had explored ways to treat cancer through operations, said the study published in Frontiers in Medicine journal.

The ancient Egyptians were known for their medical know-how. Texts describe how they would treat a range of illness and injuries, in some cases by building prosthetic limbs and inserting false teeth.

But this glimpse into cancer treatment is a “milestone in the history of medicine,” the study said.

“We see that although ancient Egyptians were able to deal with complex cranial fractures, cancer was still a medical knowledge frontier,” one of the study's authors, Tatiana Tondini, said in a statement.

The study’s lead author, professor Edgard Camarós, added that the finding was “unique evidence of how ancient Egyptian medicine would have tried to deal with or explore cancer more than 4,000 years ago.”

Camarós, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and his team looked at two skulls held by the University of Cambridge's Duckworth Collection, using micro-CT scanning and microscopic bone surface analysis, the study said.

“We wanted to learn about the role of cancer in the past, how prevalent this disease was in antiquity, and how ancient societies interacted with this pathology,” said Tondini, a researcher at Germany’s University of Tübingen.

One of the skulls belonged to a male and was dated from 2,687 to 2,345 B.C., while the other was a female and dated from 663 to 343 B.C.

The male skull had a large lesion surrounded by 30 or so small metastasized lesions around it. To their great surprise, researchers found cut marks around the lesions.

“When we first observed the cut marks under the microscope, we could not believe what was in front of us,” Tondini said.

"It seems ancient Egyptians performed some kind of surgical intervention related to the presence of cancerous cells," said another co-author, professor Albert Isidro, a surgical oncologist at the University Hospital Sagrat Cor, in Barcelona, Spain.

The female skull also had a large lesion consistent with a cancerous tumor that led to bone destruction, indicating the person might have been older. There are also two healed lesions from traumatic injuries, the study said.

By Patrick Smith.