HISTORY OF CANCER

This disease has taken the lives of a lot of people for many centuries. It is definitely not a new disease. It has been there right from human evolution. We are certainly aware of something about cancer only because of the early investigations done on this ailment.  
Cancer is derived from a Greek word “Karakinos” which stands for tumor. It is the great physician Hippocrates who derived this word. There are certainly proofs claiming cancer reports in olden days. About 1500 b.c many cases of breast tumors were first identified and recorded on papyrus. But this was not the actual period of the cancer’s invention. There are stills notions that it had begun much earlier. In olden days, people used a methodology named “fire drilling”. Nowadays cauterization is the name that is given to fire drilling. Cauterization involves direct destruction of the tissue using the hot fire drilling equipment. Cancer patients were given only palliative treatment in those days. History says that Egyptian had a great idea on the malignancy of tumors. There are no historic records on medicinal diagnostics performed on cancer patients. Greek physicians were not having enough knowledge on understanding the nature of the human anatomy.