A pathology of progress? Locating the historiography of cancer.

Despite its prominent position in today's medical research, popular culture and everyday life, cancer's history is relatively unwritten. Compared to the other great 'plagues' - cholera, tuberculosis or tropical fevers, to name but a scant handful - cancer has few dedicated pages in the general surveys, and its specialists have largely failed to convince the broader community of medical historians - or indeed historians of anything at all - that histories of the disease can tell us fundamental things about the science and practice of medicine, both past and present. Moreover, cancer has a remarkably stable profile over time, at least in terms of its definition, language and terminology - a detail that only makes the disease's absence from historical literature more surprising.