It was a revelation,” one of his students recalled. “A Pap smear would give a woman a chance to receive preventive care [and] greatly decrease the likelihood of her ever developing cancer.” Cervical cancer typically arises in an outer layer of the cervix, then grows in a flaky, superficial whirl before burrowing inward into the surrounding tissues. By sampling asymptomatic women, Papanicolaou speculated that his test, albeit imperfect, might capture the disease at its first stages. He would, in essence, push the diagnostic clock backward—from incurable, invasive cancers to curable, preinvasive
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