title: A pathology of progress? Locating the historiography of cancer.
abstract: Despite its prominent position in today's medical research, popular culture and everyday life, cancer's history is relatively unwritten. Compared to the other great 'plagues' - cholera, tuberculosis or tropical fevers, to name but a scant handful - cancer has few dedicated pages in the general surveys, and its specialists have largely failed to convince the broader community of medical historians - or indeed historians of anything at all - that histories of the disease can tell us fundamental things about the science and practice of medicine, both past and present. Moreover, cancer has a remarkably stable profile over time, at least in terms of its definition, language and terminology - a detail that only makes the disease's absence from historical literature more surprising.
authors.affiliation: King's College London.
authors.forename: Agnes
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Arnold-Forster
mesh_terms: D006663:Historiography; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000266:history*