ABSTRACT
The linking of particular cancers to chemicals first occurred in the 1760s and 1770s. In 1761, John Hill hypothesized that the habit of sniffing snuff caused nasal cancer. Shortly after, in 1775, Percival Potts noted that many of his patients with scrotal cancer were chimney sweeps. Another important discovery was made by a German physician, Rehn, in 1895, who noted an increased incidence of urinary bladder cancer among workers in the dye industry. All of these discoveries were later verified using laboratory animals. Some of the important cancer discoveries are presented in Table 16.1.
