Les charlatans du cancer

Droixhe, Daniel

doi:10.14375/np.9791037020659

Cited by 3 publications

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“…In June 1778, the Gazette de santé announced that Pierre-Jean-Claude Mauduyt de La Varenne, a regent-doctor of the Faculty of Paris, had received an annual bursary to sustain his researches into the 'treatments of various diseases by electricity'. 62 The healing should be extended to include 'the lymphatic and serous tumours'. A whole system of electrical therapy was developed in many areas, which has been described by Fr.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Franklin replied: 'It might be useful to quickly and universally spread the important discovery of the efficacious remedy of such a cruel disease', etc. 68 Alongside these 'novelties', the history of paleo-oncology as a whole in early modern times is punctuated with 'discoveries' and debates often going back to the first attempts to cure 'the cruel disease', and most of them were inevitably concluded by the famous Hippocratic statement in the Aphorisms n°48. Cancer was an incurable disease, so that 'it is better not to undertake any treatment…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tracing tradition. The idea of cancerous contagiousness from Renaissance to Enlightenment

Droixhe

2020

History of European Ideas

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This paper is concerned with landmarks in the history of the idea of cancerous contagiousness from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The origins of the idea of cancerous contagiousness is considered on the basis of Galen's distinction between scabiesleprosy, cancer and elephantiasis. Paul of Aegina (seventh century) established the association between these latter diseases. In the fourteenth century, a 'new line of inquiry' developed concerning the transmission of diseases like plague, and G. Fracastoro (1546) applied this approach by stating that putrefaction and inflammation notably produce elephantiasis, which is obviously contagious, as inflammation and heat, without putrefaction, produce cancer. J. Fernel (1548) applied the process of syphilitic contamination to ulcerated cancer, whose vapour 'is widely dispersed' and which 'quickly kills by its malignancy'. G. Cardano (1564) reacted against these views, and declared that cancer was could not be transmitted by contact. But A. Zacuth (1629-1634) and N. Tulp (1652) provided instances of such transmission. D. Sennert, who is often said to have accepted Zacuth's testimony, was doubtful and suggested, rather than contagion, transmission by heredity. This type of explanation was privileged during Classical Age, until experiments on animals or human beings infected by cancerous liquid took place during the Enlightenment in France and England. Pichler (1786) finally recommended forbidding marriage between people suffering from cancer.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%