History of Medicine

In my previous post, I explored the history of cancer. Since we know it existed in ancient times, it follows that so did its name. In fact, the name "cancer" was coined by none other than the great Hippocrates (well, not the exact name but the root of the name). Hippocrates in fact, used two terms,  carcinoma and carcinos,  to describe ulcerous and non-ulcerous tumors respectively. He named the tumors after Carcinus (or Karkinos), a giant crab in Greek mythology that was sent by the Goddess Hera to help Hydra fight against Hercules. As to why Hippocrates chose to name the tumor after a crab is not quite clear but there are several theories:       -  The hardness of a malignant tumor reminded him of the hard shell of a crab.      - The pain induced by a malignant tumor is similar to a sharp pinch of a crab's claw.     -  The tenacity of cancer is similar to the determination with which a crab bites and grabs on to a person.  While all these theories seem plausible, the

With COVID-19 grabbing much of the world's attention in the last two years, all other diseases have taken a backseat, yet they remain no less dangerous. One such disease getting buried in the covid hysteria is cancer. The second leading cause of death in the United States, cancer is one of the most prevalent diseases of modern times. A chilling fact is that nearly one in three (33%) Americans will get cancer in their lifetime. The mortality rate is equally grim—an estimated 600,000 people died of cancer in 2020 in the United States alone, nearly double the number of deaths (~350,000 in 2020) attributed to the coronavirus! Purple ribbon symbol for cancer. While there's no doubt that the incidence of cancer has increased in recent times, it is by no means a modern disease. Cancer has existed since ancient, even pre-historic times! Paleontologists recently discovered cancer in dinosaur fossils from 70 million years ago. In humans, the earliest evidence of cancer was found in a