How We Die

by Sherwin B. Nuland

As early as the days of Hippocrates and even before, the ancient Greek physicians had a clear understanding of the ways in which a malignant growth so often pursues its inexorable determination to destroy life. They gave a very specific name to the hard swellings and ulcerations they so commonly saw in the breast or protruding from the rectum or vagina; they based that name on the evidence of their eyes and fingers. To distinguish them from ordinary swellings, which they called oncos, they used the term karkinos, or “crab,” derived, interestingly enough, from an Indo-European root meaning “hard.” Oma being a suffix referring to “tumor,” karkinoma was used to designate a tumorous growth that was malignant. Centuries later, the Latin word for “crab,” cancer, came into common usage. Oncos, meantime, came to be applied to tumors of any kind, which is why we call a cancer specialist an oncologist.