ABSTRACT
The obvious lack of interest shown by the Faculty of Medicine in the establishment of the Radium Institute does not mean, as such, indifference from the hospital-university elite to the problems posed by cancer pathology. On the contrary, never was interest in the study of cancer so great as at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was strengthened, in addition, by the creation of a learned society in 1906, l’Association française pour l’étude du cancer (AFEC) [the French Association for the Study of Cancer], the first to permanently combine doctors and scientists from different specialised fields.
