Emotions As a Cause of Cancer: 18th and 19th Century Contributions

The successful treatment of cancer is still largely an unsolved problem. It will probably remain so until the cause or causes of this fatal disease are better understood. Until that time shall arrive it is certainly the obligation of the physician to apply in treatment whatever useful knowledge the profession of medicine and its allies have accumulated over the years. Each generation stands on the shoulders of its predecessors, improving in some fields of knowledge and remaining more or less stationary in others.

This generation is characterized by a conviction that the answer to the cancer state lies in the solution of the growth problem. Modern investigations are more minutely fragmenting the cell and cell nucleus, and analyzing its chemical needs at the enzyme and molecular level. The emphasis seems to-be more on the cell itself individually, as an object, rather than the organism within which the cell is found in its natural state. In the body the cell is a constituent of tissues that participate in the formation of organ systems, all of which work synchronously with each other under the control of coordinators, like the central nervous, autonomic, and hormonal systems. These views represent what would be called the local or cellular approach, and, in a sense, stand in contrast to the general or constitutional one. Modern research has made great gains in developing the cellular approach. Evidence has been produced to show that the normal cell under the impact of carcinogenic agents, whether of a physical, chemical or viral nature, is prone to mutate in the direction of neoplasia. Although it is acknowledged that the survival of the neoplastic cells are dependent upon host environmental factors, notably endocrine, the greatest advances in treatment have been those which dealt with the local destruction of the neoplasm. This has been accomplished through removal by surgical excision, through radiotherapy by destruction with ionizing radiation, and through chemother