Early modern breast cancer: be thankful for modern medicine
To the Institute for Historical Research last week for a seminar,'The Worst of All Her Afflictions': Experiencing Breast Cancer in Early Modern England', presented by Marjo Kaartinen. It almost took me back to my agricultural science days in its goriness - horrible surgical implements and blood-soaked descriptions - one of the younger participants was turning distinctly green as she listened to Fanny Burney's description of her masectomy (carried out of course without anaesthetic) and the picture of a breast dissected by an 18th-century surgeon circulated remarkably quickly ...
Nonetheless it wasn't all gore. There was also an interesting debate on the likely incidence of the disease then compared to now. Of course it will never be possible to get statistics, but it might be possible to get an impression from contemporary accounts, and particularly women's level of fear of the disease (given all of the other deadly dangers around). And the impression was that it was quite high, particularly given that the number of women over 40 in the population was low.
But very few records survive in women's own words. There are a couple of reasons for that. Due to - understandable - fear of the operation, women usually did not approach surgeons, or decide to have it, until the disease was very far advanced (although surgeons did understand that it was important to operate early). So they didn't survive long afterward - usually only a few months. (If, of course, the operation didn't kill them.)
Also some facts (that you might not want to know) about breast cancer. Untreated breast cancer presents as black growth and produces dark, evil-smelling liquid; in 60 per cent of cases it ulcerates. This was a smell that early modern physicians and surgeons recognised. They understood that the disease tended to spread into the lymph nodes (which they would check while performing a masectomy, but metastising was not yet understood). Untreated, the disease usually killed in about three years.
In the early modern era some thought it came from environmental factors, some thought sex life or lack of it - it was well known that nuns were prone to it. Some thought sour milk to blame, others lack of exercise, melancholy, green sickness. Breast-feeding was thought by some to be a cause, and this was one reason for the use of wet-nurses.
"Treatments included all of the usual herbal remedies, usually applied topically, and often caustics, which must have been hugely painful. Books of medicine often contained receipts for "canker in women's breast".
But women victims often seem to have kept their condition secret until it was utterly impossible to hide. By that time, often, surgeons would not operate. The traditional Hippocratic view was that if the cancer did not move - was attached, presumably to the breast bone or ribs? the patient would only die faster if operated on. This may have been the reason why the Machioness of Northhampton, a waiting lady in Elizabeth (I'm not sure which one), went to Antwerp to consult doctors there.
There's one final irony: Fanny Burney survived many years after the operation, so it is likely that her illness was not cancer, and the operation was unnecessary.
posted by Natalie Bennett at 2/28/2006 03:49:00 pm
4 Comments:
I recall a BBC program some years ago on the history of treatment for breast cancer. It included surgery which removed one's whole shoulder. Talk about a radical mastectomy! I am thankful. When my lump was spotted through mammography screening four and a half years ago, it was very early and a teen weeny lump that was regarded as fortuitious to diagnose. So teeny was it that my surgeon did not bother to find a matching sentinel node. Three weeks later I was back on the surgeon's table because of DCIS discovered in the pathology. Then I had one week of brachytherapy in a pilot program - rather than the six weeks or so of the standard beam radiation treatment. And things have progressed since then. How fortunate we are! Because things were discovered so early for me, I don't even consider myself a "breast cancer survivor". I don't feel like a survivor. I merely feel like I was treated successfully. Am counting the days (well almost) until October when five years clear will be up. When that happens, a quite champers will be in order and a memory of what once was for women like me.
There's a historical novel called The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi that deals with a Japanese doctor in the Tokugawa Era who is looking for a way to deal with breast cancer--it was believed at the time that the breast was vital to a woman's survival. His attempts to develop a general anaestetic kill his mother and render his wife blind, if I remember correctly. It's also the story of the rivalry between Kae, the narrator, and her mother-in-law, for the doctor's attentions. It's a sad story, but interesting.
Best of luck, Miss Eagle!
And thanks for the tip about the Japanese book - I'll look it out.
John Adams' daughter Abigail (called Nabby by her family) had breast cancer. David McCullough's biography of Adams includes a description of Nabby's early nineteenth-century masectomy (which John Adams noted took about twenty-five minutes). Nabby lived two more years before her cancer returned and killed her.
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