To describe this form of treatment, Carbone and his team used the word adjuvant, from the Latin phrase “to help.” Adjuvant chemotherapy, Carbone conjectured, could be the surgeon’s little helper. It would eradicate microscopic deposits of cancer left behind after surgery, thus extirpating any remnant reservoirs of malignancy in the body in early breast cancer—in essence, completing the Herculean cancer-cleansing task that Halsted had set for himself.
