History
In past centuries, the development of breast cancer was most commonly seen as divine punishment or a trial. From ancient Greek medicine until the end of the 17th century, the dominant medical explanation was an imbalance of the four humors. By the start of the 18th century, humoralism had generally been rejected. Many other theories were put forward, often related to sexual activity: In 1713, Bernardino Ramazzini said that nuns developed breast cancer at a higher rate than married women because they did not engage in sexual intercourse, and the "unnatural" lack of sexual activity caused instability of the breasts; others countered that the cause was frequently too much sexual activity. Other theories from the 18th century included various sorts of problems with the movement of body fluids, such as lymphatic blockages, curdled breast milk or the transformation of pus left after an infection.
In modern times, women are more likely to blame themselves, perhaps deciding that their diet, childbearing history, decision not to breastfeed, or level of exercise is the cause.
Read more about this topic: Risk Factors For Breast Cancer
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)