• Question: How long ave we been able to treat some forms of cancer in an effective manner?

    Asked by jackyboy1999 to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 19 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      ‘Allo Jackyboy

      I work in a place called the Beatson Institute, which is named after George Beatson, who showed that you could cure terminal breast cancer in women by taking out their ovaries. This was in the late 1800’s.

      Now we use hormone therapy to achieve the same thing.

    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      Hello
      I found some really interesting stuff about the history of cancer here: http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/002048-pdf.pdf

      It’s quite long so I’ll give you some highlights!

      Surgery to remove cancer was first suggested back in the 1700s by a Scottish surgeon called John Hunter but it took about a hundred years before we had anaesthetics to actually do the surgery. Radiation was first used in 1899 just 3 years after X-rays were discovered!
      And Robert has mentioned the hormone therapy already!

      Amazing to think that we had all of these ideas so long ago! Many people think of cancer as a ‘modern’ disease but some of the treatments are obviously not modern at all but are in fact rather old!

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