Why is Cancer Called Cancer? We Need to go Back to Greco-Roman Times for the Answer

The Conversation / By Konstantine Panegyres

One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, developed a cancer between his groin and scrotum. As the cancer spread, Satyrus had ever greater pains. He was unable to sleep and had convulsions.

Advanced cancers in that part of the body were regarded as inoperable, and there were no drugs strong enough to alleviate the agony. So doctors could do nothing. Eventually, the cancer took Satyrus' life at the age of 65.

Cancer was already well known in this period. A text written in the late fifth or early fourth century BC, called Diseases of Women, described how breast cancer develops:

"Hard growths form […] out of them hidden cancers develop […] pains shoot up from the patients' breasts to their throats, and around their shoulder blades […] such patients become thin through their whole body […] breathing decreases, the sense of smell is lost […]"

Other medical works of this period describe different sorts of cancers. A woman from the Greek city of Abdera died from a cancer of the chest; a man with throat cancer survived after his doctor burned away the tumor.

Where does the word 'cancer' come from?

The word cancer comes from the same era. In the late fifth and early fourth century BC, doctors were using the word karkinos—the ancient Greek word for crab—to describe malignant tumors. Later, when Latin-speaking doctors described the same disease, they used the Latin word for crab: cancer. So, the name stuck.

Even in ancient times, people wondered why doctors named the disease after an animal. One explanation was the crab is an aggressive animal, just as cancer can be an aggressive disease; another explanation was the crab can grip one part of a person's body with its claws and be difficult to remove, just as cancer can be difficult to remove once it has developed. Others thought it was because of the appearance of the tumor.

The physician Galen (129–216 AD) described breast cancer in his work A Method of Medicine to Glaucon, and compared the form of the tumor to the form of a crab:

"We have often seen in the breasts a tumor exactly like a crab. Just as that animal has feet on either side of its body, so too in this disease the veins of the unnatural swelling are stretched out on either side, creating a form similar to a crab."…

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