Healthy Balance

The History of Cancer: A Timeline

cancer treatment timeline

Throughout its 4,000-year history, cancer has left doctors, scientists and patients with questions that the medical and science fields could not even start to address until recent decades. For centuries, the question has lingered: Will there be a time when we find a way to control or even cure this disease?

UVA Cancer Center presents a Ken Burns documentary “Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies.” Sign up for a free screening March 30.

Today, in 2015, researchers and scientists finally understand on a cellular level what cancer actually is and how it spreads and have discovered many successful, targeted ways of treating it – surgically, medically and with radiation.

Almost daily, new discoveries about cancer are made, critical ones like the key to cancer’s spread.

How did we get to this momentous time in the history of cancer? Based on “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” and Cancer Progress’ timeline, here are some of the most noteworthy cancer-related achievements and failures.

19th Century

1840s

1850s

1860s

1890s

UVA researcher Tom Parsons examines DNA of viruses and cancer in 1983

20th Century

1900-1910s

1920s -1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

University of Virginia Cancer Center employees (year unknown)

1970s

1980s

1990s

21st Century

2000s

2010s

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