ABSTRACT
This monograph provides a brief summary of important concepts regarding the natural history of breast cancer that begot various treatments used from ancient times to 1982. The text is organized by historical periods including antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and each of the last four centuries. Hippocrates’ somewhat nihilistic attitudes about the treatment of breast cancer, Celsius’ treatise from the 1st century AD – the oldest extant clinical description of the disease – and the dominance of Galen’s ideas for nearly 1500 years are described. De Moulin explores the basis for popular ideas that arose in later centuries, and often provides the social context for the application of treatments. He demonstrates how increased knowledge of anatomy led eventually to an understanding of how the disease spread from a single focus in the breast to many areas of the body and how the introduction of the microscope led to cellular concepts of disease spread. He illustrates the point that in the 20th century the application of statistics led to more reliable evaluation of treatment effects.
