“Cancer … is of colour livide or blacke, hard, and rough, eating, gnawing, and going, like unto the Crabbe-fish.”

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The beast that forces us to reflect on our existence: cancer is rife – the cause of 14% of all deaths worldwide in 2008 – and the diagnosis is heartbreaking.

Awareness of cancer was much less common in the past, and nobody can say why the disease seems to have become more widespread. Is it down to improved diagnosis? To our increasing life spans? To the perversion of our food, our environment?

Tumour of the humerus – from Severino, 1632 (1580-1656): the first clinical illustration of a tumour.

No doubt we have a better understanding than our ancestors, but it’s strange that cancer presents modern medicine with problems previously unknown. Have we overlooked a factor that was taken for granted by physicians in the past? Continue reading →