The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding the Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America. The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding the Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America. The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding the Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America. The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

Cancer is low or absent on the health agendas of low- and middle-income countries (LMCs) despite the fact that more people die from cancer in these countries than from AIDS and malaria combined. International health organizations, bilateral aid agencies, and major foundations—which are instrumental in setting health priorities—also have largely ignored cancer in these countries. This book identifies feasible, affordable steps for LMCs and their international partners to begin to reduce the cancer burden for current and future generations. Stemming the growth of cigarette smoking tops the list to prevent cancer and all the other major chronic diseases. Other priorities include infant vaccination against the hepatitis B virus to prevent liver cancers and vaccination to prevent cervical cancer. Developing and increasing capacity for cancer screening and treatment of highly curable cancers (including most childhood malignancies) can be accomplished using "resource-level appropriateness" as a guide. And there are ways to make inexpensive oral morphine available to ease the pain of the many who will still die from cancer.

The statements about essential fats or the life threatening effects of certain fats and their significance for the cancer problem lead to a collision with prevailing opinion. Convinced of her scientific findings on the natural science level, Dr. Johanna Budwig devoted her life to the realization of the validity of her research results for sustaining human life in medicine, and in the process bring about a change in the direction of cancer research and therapy.

In 1950, a diagnosis of cancer was all but a death sentence. Mortality rates only got worse, and as late as 1986, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine lamented: "We are losing the war against cancer." Cancer is one of humankind's oldest and most persistent enemies; it has been called the existential disease. But we are now entering a new, and more positive, phase in this long campaign. While cancer has not been cured -- and a cure may elude us for a long time yet -- there has been a revolution in our understanding of its nature. Years of brilliant science have revealed how this individualistic disease seizes control of the foundations of life -- our genes -- and produces guerrilla cells that can attack and elude treatments. Armed with those insights, scientists have been developing more effective weapons and producing better outcomes for patients. Paul A. Marks, MD, has been a leader in these efforts to finally control this devastating disease. Marks helped establish the strategy for the "war on cancer" in 1971 as a researcher and member of President Nixon's cancer panel. As the president and chief executive officer for nineteen years at the world's pre-eminent cancer hospital, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, he was instrumental in ending the years of futility. He also developed better therapies that promise a new era of cancer containment. Some cancers, like childhood leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, that were once deadly conditions, are now survivable -- even curable. New steps in prevention and early diagnosis are giving patients even more hope. On the Cancer Frontier is Marks' account of the transformation in our understanding of cancer and why there is growing optimism in our ability to stop it.

This report considers the biological and behavioral mechanisms that may underlie the pathogenicity of tobacco smoke. Many Surgeon General's reports have considered research findings on mechanisms in assessing the biological plausibility of associations observed in epidemiologic studies. Mechanisms of disease are important because they may provide plausibility, which is one of the guideline criteria for assessing evidence on causation. This report specifically reviews the evidence on the potential mechanisms by which smoking causes diseases and considers whether a mechanism is likely to be operative in the production of human disease by tobacco smoke. This evidence is relevant to understanding how smoking causes disease, to identifying those who may be particularly susceptible, and to assessing the potential risks of tobacco products.