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Breast Cancer 100 Years On-What We Have learnt !
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Beatson, George Thomas |
| Copyright Year | 2012 |
| Abstract | It is exactly 100 years since George Thomas Beatson, son of the Surgeon-General of the Indian Army, discovered that the natural history of breast cancer was influenced by ovarian function. On 15th June 1895, he removed the ovaries of a 33-year-old woman with post-mastectomy recurrence of disease on her chest wall, following which it completely remitted. The thoughts leading to this unique surgical experiment had been developed many years previou";' when Beatson was physician to the owner of an e, rate in the West of Scotland. Observing lambs in an adjoining sheep farm he developed an interest iJ lactation which led him to recognise that prior t( lactation the breast tissue was intensely proliferated, an appearance which almost appeared cancerous. Learning that in Australia cows were castrated immediately following calving to maintain lactation indefinitely, he postulated that the removal of the ovaries might result in a similar 'fatty degeneration' of malignant tissue as was seen in the lactating breast. His theory was wrong; but his experiment a successl. A further 28 years were to elapse before the discovery that the ovaries secreted oestradiol provided a rational explanation for this effect2 • |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.e-mjm.org/1996/v51n1/Breast_Cancer.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
