A Tale of Two Trends: Cancer Mortality Rises and Falls With Public Health Efforts

Unlike a majority of the diseases that humanity has encountered, succumbed to or overcame, cancer is a disease older than the human race and has always been prevalent in our history of medicine. The oldest known record of cancer is breast cancer (BC), described in the Edwin Smith Papyrus in 3000 BC as masses in the breast that are incurable.1 The subsequent Ebers Papyrus, written in 1500 BC, further describes other tumors of the skin, uterus, and gastrointestinal tract.1 The Greek physician Hippocrates (460-375 BC) is credited with coining the term “cancer”, after associating the moving invasive protrusions of tumor masses to the claws of a crab.1 Throughout antiquity, various cultures attempted to treat these masses with cauterization, crude surgery, bloodletting, salts, herbal remedies, and heavy metal poisons, practices that were often fatal and remained unchanged for over 3000 years until the advent of modern medicine.1