It Felt—nearly Twenty-five Hundred Years After Hippocrates

All Cancers Are Alike But They Are Alike In A Unique Way.

It Felt—nearly Twenty-five Hundred Years After Hippocrates Had Naively Coined The Overarching Term Karkinos—that Modern Oncology Was Hardly Any More Sophisticated In Its Taxonomy Of Cancer.

It Remains An Astonishing, Disturbing Fact That In America - A Nation Where Nearly Every New Drug Is Subjected To Rigorous Scrutiny As A Potential Carcinogen, And Even The Bare Hint Of A Substance's Link To Cancer Ignites A Firestorm Of Public Hysteria And Media Anxiety - One Of The Most Potent And Common Carcinogens Known To Humans Can Be Freely Bought And Sold At Every Corner Store For A Few Dollars.

If The History Of Medicine Is Told Through The Stories Of Doctors, It Is Because Their Contributions Stand In Place Of The More Substantive Heroism Of Their Patients.

There's A Phrase In Shakespeare: He Refers To It As The 'hidden Imposthume', And This Idea Of A Hidden Swelling Is Seminal To Cancer. But Even In More Contemporary Writing It's Called 'the Big C'.