ABSTRACT
The experimental nature of cancer chemotherapy trials in children drew criticism from Paediatricians, but their misgivings were matched by parents’ desperation for a cure. After World War II, the new specialty of Paediatric Oncology introduced both hope and heartbreak to families who had children with conditions that up to had been uniformly fatal. The extraordinary success of pharmacological drugs after World War II in treating infections led to a search for cancer chemotherapy. Old medical textbooks reveal the inadequacy of clinical medicine without antibiotics: gangrene, cavernous ulcers, abscesses and consumption — the old name for tuberculosis. Effective anti-cancer drugs happened first in Paediatric Oncology. Paediatric Pathologists and Haematologists in the early twentieth century confined their research to morphological classifications of different types of childhood cancers and leukaemia. Cancer and leukaemia are the epitome of life-threatening illnesses in children even though the prognosis has vastly improved.
