One of the earliest descriptions of an individual with cancer comes from the 4th century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the Black Sea city of Heracleia, developed a cancer between the groin and scrotum. As the cancer spread, Satyrus felt an increasing number of pain. He couldn’t sleep, he had convulsions.
Advanced cancers on this a part of the body were considered inoperable and there have been no drugs strong enough to relieve the pain. Therefore, the doctors couldn’t do anything. Ultimately, cancer took Satyrus’ life at the age of 65.
Cancer was already well-known during this era. The text was written at the end of the fifth or the starting of the 4th century BC, the so-called Women’s Diseasesdescribed the development of breast cancer:
hard growths form (…) hidden tumors develop from them (…) pain radiates from the patients’ breasts to the throat and around the shoulder blades (…) such patients shed extra pounds throughout the body (…) respiratory becomes weaker, the sense of smell is lost (… )
Other medical work This period describes various forms of cancer. A girl from the Greek city of Abdera died of chest cancer; A person with throat cancer survived after a health care provider burned the tumor.
Where does the word “cancer” come from?
Winemaker Pierre Roche/Wikimedia Commons
The word cancer comes from the same era. At the turn of the fifth and 4th centuries BC, doctors used the word – Ancient Greek word for crab – to describe malignant tumors. Later, when Latin-speaking physicians described the same disease, they used the Latin word for crab: . So the name stuck.
Already in ancient times, people wondered why doctors named this disease after an animal. One explanation was that the crab is an aggressive animal, like the crayfish aggressive disease; one other explanation was that a crab could grab one a part of an individual’s body with its claws and be difficult to remove, just as a cancer could possibly be difficult to remove once it develops. Others believed it was due to the appearance of a tumor.
The physician Galen (129-216 AD) described breast cancer in his work A technique of medication for Glauconand compared the type of a tumor with that of a crab:
We often saw a lump in the breast exactly like a crab’s. Just as this animal has feet on each side of its body, so on this disease the veins of unnatural swelling extend on each side, making a crab-like shape.
Not everyone agreed on what caused the cancer
Didier Descouens/Musée Ingres-Bourdelle/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
During the Greco-Roman period, there have been different opinions about the causes of cancer.
According to a widely held ancient medical theory, there are 4 humors in the body: blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile. Otherwise, these 4 humors have to be kept in balance the person gets sick. It was believed that if an individual suffered from excess black bile, it might eventually lead to cancer.
The physician Erasistratus, who lived around 315–240 BC, disagreed. However, so far as we know, he has not offered another explanation.
How was cancer treated?
Cancer was treated in various ways alternative ways. It was believed that cancer in its early stages could possibly be cured with drugs.
Galena taken over that through the use of these kinds of drugs and repeatedly purging his patients with vomiting or enemas, he sometimes managed to make emerging tumors disappear. He said the same treatment sometimes prevents more advanced cancers from developing further. However, he also said that surgery is crucial if these drugs don’t work.
Surgery was often avoided because patients often died from blood loss. The most successful surgeries were for tumors at the end of the breast. Leonidas, a physician who lived at the turn of the 2nd and third centuries AD described his method, which involved cauterization (burning):
I often operate in cases where the tumors don’t reach the chest (…) After positioning the patient on her back, I incise the healthy breast area above the tumor after which cauterize the incision until a scab forms and the bleeding stops. standing. I then incise again, marking the area, cutting deep into the breast and cauterize again. I do that (cutting and cauterizing) very often (…) Thanks to this, the bleeding is not dangerous. Once I’ve finished cutting out, I cauterize the entire area again until it dries.
Cancer was widely considered an incurable disease and subsequently feared. Some individuals with cancer, comparable to the poet Silius Italicus (26-102 AD), died by suicide to end the torment.
Patients also prayed to the gods for hope for cure. An example of this is Innocentia, an aristocrat who lived in Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia) in the fifth century AD. She told her doctor that divine intervention cured her of breast cancer, nevertheless it was due to her doctor I didn’t imagine her.
Walery Bareta/Shutterstock
From the past to the future
We began with Satyrus, a tyrant who lived in the 4th century BC. In the roughly 2,400 years since then, much has modified in our knowledge of the causes, prevention, and treatment of cancer. We also know that there are more 200 differing kinds cancer. Some people have cancer that is treated so successfully that they live an extended time.
However, there is still no general “cure for cancer” for a disease that affects approx one in five people develop throughout their lives. Only in 2022Worldwide, there have been roughly 20 million recent cases of cancer and 9.7 million cancer deaths. We clearly have a good distance to go.
