Another Greek word would intersect with the history of cancer—onkos, a word used occasionally to describe tumors, from which the discipline of oncology would take its modern name. Onkos was the Greek term for a mass or a load, or more commonly a burden; cancer was imagined as a burden carried by the body. In Greek theater, the same word, onkos, would be used to denote a tragic mask that was often “burdened” with an unwieldy conical weight on its head to denote the psychic load carried by its wearer.
