Cancer Is The Father Of Medicine - 1458 Words

Cancer is when the cells in a part of the body start to grow out of control. Many types of cancer exist, but they all start the same way, out-of-control growth of cells. It is the second leading cause of death in the United States.The word cancer is credited to the Hippocrates, who is also considered the father of medicine. About one-half of all men and one-third of all women will develop cancer at some point in their lifetime. The first evidence of cancer was found among fossilized bone tumors, human mummies in ancient Egypt, and ancient manuscripts. Types of cancer like osteosarcoma and bony skull destruction, that has been found in the head and neck have been found in things like mummies. The oldest description of cancer was†¦show more content†¦The Lymph theory is falls along the humoral theory in a sense. The people that came up with the lymph theory believe that lymph and blood were the most important bodily function and â€Å"Stahl and Hoffman theorized that cancer was composed of fermenting and degenerating lymph† (http://www.cancer.org). This theory gained a lot of support because scientist agreed that tumors grew from lymphs because they are thrown out by blood. The Blastema theory is a theory created by Johannes Muller who thought that cancer was made up of cells and not lymph, but also believe that the cancer came from mutated cells not the normal ones. He has a student who was Rudolph Virchow who was determined that cancer cells are driven from other cells. Another theory is the Chronic irritation theory. This is not a major theory. Scientist Virchow proposed that chronic irritation was the cause of cancer. But he was wrong because cancer does not spread like liquid. A German surgeon showed him that cancers spreads through malignant cells and not through just any part of the body. The last two theories are Trauma and Infectious disease. When people didn’t really understand the causes of caner they thought that trauma was the reason behind the cause. There is not a lot of facts off of this theory. But with infectious disease two scientist named Zacutus Lusitani and Nicholas Tulp believe that cancer was contagious. This was based off of â€Å"their experiences with breast cancer in members of