Between 1891 and 1981, in the nearly one hundred years of the radical mastectomy, an estimated five hundred thousand women underwent the procedure to “extirpate” cancer. Many chose the procedure. Many were forced into it. Many others did not even realize that it was a choice. Many were permanently disfigured; many perceived the surgery as a benediction; many suffered its punishing penalties bravely, hoping that they had treated their cancer as aggressively and as definitively as possible. Halsted’s “cancer storehouse” grew far beyond its original walls at Hopkins. His ideas entered oncology,
...more
