CANCER THROUGH THE AGES: THE SILENT ENEMY OF LIVING BEINGS

A timeline through history

by Lilie Grosselin

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), nearly 20 million people are affected by cancer every year. This disease represents a major challenge for society, which has been striving to understand its mysteries since prehistoric times. Evidence of its existence has been discovered dating back more than 76 million years, including an osteosarcoma - a bone tumour - found on the foreleg of a herbivorous dinosaur.

Prehistory

Until -3000 BC

“Our studies show that diseases were already present among our prehistoric ancestors, millions of years before modern industrial societies existed,” reveals palaeoanthropologist Edward Odes.

In 1989, palaeontologists discovered a Centrosaurus leg bone in the Canadian province of Alberta. Initially, they thought that the deformation of this bone was due to a healed fracture. But recent high-resolution tomography examinations revealed that the apple-sized lump was in fact a cancerous tumour.

Until recently, cancerous tumours were virtually absent from palaeoanthropological studies. The reason for this? Cancer does not only manifest itself in bones: it can affect organs or blood, as in the case of leukaemia, tissues that leave no trace 1 million years after death.

This surprising discovery pushes back the origins of cancer well beyond what was previously thought, anchoring this disease in the depths of prehistory, testifying to its presence from the emergence of multicellular life.

Antiquity

3000 BC to 476 AD

Ancient Egypt (around -3100 BC to 30 BC)

The ancient Egyptian civilisation left behind not only pyramids, but also a precious legacy of medical texts illustrating their advances in health. The first written document about cancer is the Edwin Smith’s papyrus, which details 48 cases of cancer.

The authors of the papyrus admit that there is no treatment for this disease, making it incurable. “They had knowledge, but knew how to recognise its limits”, stresses Dr Edgard Camarós, a researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Far from limiting themselves to theories, the Egyptians demonstrated real technical expertise, seeking to unravel the mysteries of malignant tumours. A fascinating discovery, based on the analysis of two skulls over four thousand years old, reveals that they had already attempted to treat cancer using the methods available at the time.

The use of a sharp metal tool on the skull of a man who lived between 2687 and 2345 BC has been discovered by researchers from Cambridge University. Letting thought that an operation have been experimented, on the round metastases found in him body. It remains to be seen whether this operation was carried out during his lifetime, in the hope of a cure, or after his death, to gain a better understanding of the disease that afflicted him.

Whatever the case, this discovery sheds new light on the interest of Egyptian civilisations in what we now call cancer, proving that the fight against this disease goes back thousands of years.

Ancient Greece (around 800 to 31 BC)

In Ancient Greece, although poorly understood and considered incurable, cancer was already attracting the attention of doctors. Hippocrates (460-377 BC), considered to be the father of medicine, was the first to named the disease “karkinos” and “karkinoma”, meaning crab in Greek, inspired by the shape of the veins around the tumours, which resembled the animal’s legs.

He classified tumours affecting various organs, including the skin, breast and rectum. According to his theory of the four humours, excess black bile was the main cause of cancer.

Galen (129-216 AD) later developed this idea in his treatise “On Unnatural Tumours”. He attributed the disease to an unbalanced diet that weakened the liver, which produced an excess of black bile, thickening the blood and causing dark veins around the tumours, reminiscent of a crab.

Middle Ages

476 to 1492 AD

“ We must now add cancer as one of the main classes of disease that afflicted people in the Middle Ages”, says anthropologist Jenna Dittmar.

A recent study conducted by Cambridge University reveals that between 9% and 14% of British adults in medieval times would have suffered from cancer. Previous estimations considered around 1% the number of population touched at this period. This difference can be explained by an evolution in the method of analysis “We have looked inside the bones to find hidden cancers” expose the Cambridge anthropologist Piers Mitchell. This proves that a significant proportion of the medieval population was affected by this disease, even thought these figures are four to five times lower than nowaday.

This analysis, which involved 143 skeletons from six cemeteries in England, was carried out using scanners and X-rays. According to P. Mitchell: “Bones, after being buried for 500 to 1,000 years, are often damaged by environmental factors such as tree roots or rodents”. This is the reason why the researchers focused on skeletons with intact parts, in particular the pelvis, spine and femurs, where metastases are more common. However, it is important to note that these results are not fully truthful “Scans only detect bone cancer in about 75% of cases”, explains P. Mitchell.

Modern times

1492 to 1789 AD

In the 17th century, cancer was still widely regarded as an incurable and mysterious disease, shrouded in superstition. Fear of an imaginary contagion led to the social exclusion of patients, who were often turned away from hospitals.

However, the progress of medicine thanks to advances in anatomy and the practice of dissection enabled doctors to gain a better understanding of human structure and pathologies, including tumours. Nicolaes Tulp, a Dutch surgeon, contributed to this progress with his detailed descriptions of cancers in “Observationes Medicae”.

This marked the beginning of a shift in perspective: cancer was no longer seen simply as a general imbalance in the body’s humours, but as a localised condition that could be treated directly, in particular by means of still rudimentary surgery to remove tumours.

This shift in our understanding of cancer, towards a more precise and anatomical approach, marked a turning point in the history of medicine, as it established links between the environment, lifestyles and the onset of disease, and laid the foundations for modern medicine.

Contemporary period

1789 to today

In the 19th century, science entered an era of radical transformation with the invention of the microscope which put an end to two centuries of erroneous beliefs, in particular the theory of coagulated lymph.

1858 saw the emergence of Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), a pathologist who developed the cellular theory of cancer. He introduced the concept of “cellular disease”, asserting that to combat cancer, it had to be attacked at its source: the cells.

This new vision paved the way for chemotherapy. Even if the effectiveness was not really demonstrated until the 1940s, these discoveries led to the development of the first chemical substances capable of slowing down cell division. Thus becoming the basis of modern chemotherapy.

Nowadays, scientists are pursuing in-depth research into the links between cancer and DNA, an idea first mooted by John Hunter (1728-1793). Hunter argued that factors such as heredity, age and even climate played a crucial role in the development of cancer. He estimated that the average age for contracting the disease was between 40 and 60.

Despite centuries of research by palaeontologists, doctors and scientists, cancer remains one of the leading causes of death from disease today. This complex and dreaded illness continues to defy science, despite considerable advances in its understanding and treatment. This persistence invites a significant question is cancer inherent in life, whether human or animal?