But what do we think of cancer today?Ĭancer develops from our own cells, but unlike normal cells, cancerous cells multiply endlessly and never die.Mukherjee manages to convey not only a forensically precise picture of what he sees, but a shiver, too, of what he feels. Our second theory was concerned with external agents.
So humanity first thought cancer’s cause was located in the body’s own substance. Scientists falsely believed they had found them after examining “cancerous tissues” under microscopes, and in 1926 physician Johannes Fibiger was even awarded the Nobel Prize for “proving” that roundworms cause stomach cancer (he was wrong!) Worms, fungal spores and protozoa were also thought to cause cancer. Until 1850, scientists suspected that parasitic and inscrutable poisonous vapors called miasmas led to tumors. With Galen’s black bile theory refuted, many scientists turned to a substance that was both external to the body, and invisible. The late eighteenth-century physician Baillie was equally unsuccessful in his investigation. At this time, the physician Vesalius autopsied cancer-riddled corpses, and was surprised to find that neither the tumors nor the bodies contained black bile. This understanding, first developed by Greco-Roman physician Galen in CE 160, informed mainstream theory about cancer for centuries.īut, because autopsies were forbidden for religious reasons, there was no opportunity to prove Galen’s theory until the sixteenth century. How does cancer fit into this four-part physical system? The first known theory of cancer held that tumors were caused by an entrapment of black bile. For example, a short-tempered person would be diagnosed by Hippocrates as having an excess of yellow bile. When one of these fluids was out of balance with the other, then an illness or personality problem would result. Ever heard the expression “balanced personality?” Today it might be a way to describe one of your level-headed friends, but around 400 BCE it was closely linked to the ideas of Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine.” He was convinced that the human body was composed of four cardinal fluids or humors: Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
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