Who Discovered Breast Cancer?

Based on historical records in the Edwin Smith papyrus, a copy of a trauma surgery textbook from Ancient. It details a variety of cases of breast cancer between the years 3000 and 2500 B.C. There was no definite cure for such disease during that time, tumors of the breast were removed from women in Egypt through cauterization.

Additional Facts

Breast cancer was clinically recognized and described by the era of Hippocrates in the 4 th century B.C. It would be hundreds of years before the medical community developed the knowledge and the technology to learn more about how breast cancer works. In the 1600s and 1700s work was done by a variety of doctors who learned that cancer of the breast was linked with the lymph nodes in the armpit.

In the late 1800s the technique of a mastectomy (the removal of the infected breast and underlying tissue) became a treatment for breast cancer. Radical mastectomies (the removal of both breasts and underlying tissue) were a common procedure until the 1970s, when understanding of cancer moved forward again. In the nineteenth century the medical community and the scientists began to study cancer systematically and intensively.

Basic procedures needed to help identify breast cancer, include clinical breast exam, x-ray mammography and genetic testing. If these are not enough, other tests may be performed such as magnetic resonance imaging. Even at home, it is possible to perform self-examination breast cancer awareness to help determine the different symptoms of this serious health problem.