Emperor of All Maladies,
A Biography of Cancer
Scribner Publishing $19.99
Though this title might intrigue you, the subtitle will probably turn you off, for there is no one whose life has not been effected by cancer.
There are many sad stories in this book, but it is in total a hopeful book, one for which the author won a Pulitzer Prize.
This is the story of cancer from the time of Hippocrates, when it was thought by medical authorities to be caused by “black humors” in the body.
That was just one of the theories put forward, but when it proved incorrect, there were many other possibilities waiting to be tried.
In fact cancer is not one disease, but many, depending where it presents itself. Primarily the tale is told here of the brave but sometimes foolhardy clinicians and scientists who dared to imagine, and try something different to save the lives of people they had come to care for, not just as patients, but as puzzles to be solved.
The reader is reminded of Dr Barnard and the first heart transplants; someone had to go first, with what was thought in many circles to be an outrageous treatment.
The author traces the discovery of anesthesia, which made the surgical removal of cancers much less painful for the patient, and the seemingly insurmountable problem of infection.
Joseph Lister, a name that used to be familiar to school children, began to use carbolic salve and dressings, which improved chances of survival.
Radical surgeries became the order of the day in the mid 1890’s, the medical profession was beginning to have a sense that localized cancers spread in unknown ways, metastasizing throughout the body.
Amid all this rather gruesome history, lives were being saved.
Sometimes treatments were successful and no one really knew why. In 1895 the x-ray was invented, and “for certain types of cancers it was a benediction.”
In fact, radiation also produced cancers, remember radium paint on watch faces?
That glow in the dark often proved fatal for those who painted watch faces.
In 1948, fund raising for Cancer research began, with the plan to study cancer in children.
These were the years of the development of antibiotics, medical science was moving ahead at an exciting rate.
The next logical move was multiple drug therapy or “chemo-therapy” but cancer posed more questions for every treatment presented.
Many cancers have been cured, many patients whole and well after treatment.
Prevention is now the watchword. Pap smears and mamograms, have saved many lives, while smoking is recognized as a huge culprit.
The author is particularly vehement about the great loss of life caused through smoking.
Perhaps that’s why he wrote the book. This is a very long book (472) fact filled pages.
It is an ambitious read, and a salute to the scientists and clinicians who untiringly laboured to beat this disease, often losing their own lives in the search. A tough but important book.