Is cancer a modern day disease? According to Cancer Research
UK cancer certainly is not a modern disease. It claims that plants can get
cancer and that dinosaurs probably suffered from the disease – and that cancer
has been around for thousands of years. An Egyptian papyrus written between 3000 and 1500 BC refers
to tumours of the breast. Apparently, the name cancer comes from the ancient
Greek word for crab as scientists at the time thought that clusters of cancer
cells looked like the legs of a crab. Hippocrates,
the Father of Medicine’ is credited with being the first to recognize the
difference between benign and malignant tumours.
In 1775 Dr
Percivall Pott, one of the first people to suggest a cause for one type of
cancer noticed that many young boys employed as chimney sweeps developed cancer
of the scrotum later in life; he suggested that something in the soot was
causing cancer. The noys were spoken to and were encouraged to wash themselves properly. A
century later Dr Pott’s observations were proven to be correct.
18th
century – the first cancer hospital was founded in Reims, France – this was
in the mistaken belief that cancer was an infectious disease.
1839 – the French
gynaecologist, Recamier coined the word metastasis, meaning spread of cancer –
for invasion of the bloodstream by cancer.
1953 – Francis Crick and James Watson unravelled the structure of DNA. Studies started on trying to understand the causes of cancer at a molecular level; since then new treatments were based on this knowledge.
According to Cancer Research UK the last fifty years have seen an explosion of knowledge in trying to understand this ‘most fundamental disease’ and that discoveries are occurring on an almost weekly basis. Go online to learn more on the latest advances in cancer research from Science Update blog.
http://www.raydajacobs.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment