Contemporary
The History of Cancer: From Ancient Crabs to Cellular Code
Cancer feels like a modern disease, but it is as old as multicellular life. Dinosaur bones carry tumours. Egyptian mummies carry them too. What is new is our understanding of it. In about 3,600 years, humanity has moved from writing "there is no treatment" on a papyrus to reading the mutations of a single tumour and designing a drug, or even a vaccine, around them. This article follows that journey: what cancer is, how it was discovered, and what medicine uses against it today.