Breast cancer and the "materiality of risk": The rise of morphological prediction

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 241-266

  Löwy, Ilana ^a,b  

^a INSERM   (France)

^b CERMES   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BIOPSY; BREAST TUMOR; CONFERENCE PAPER; FEMALE; FROZEN SECTION; HISTORY; HUMAN; MASTECTOMY; MICROSCOPY; PATHOLOGY; PROGNOSIS; RISK;

BIOPSY; BREAST NEOPLASMS; FEMALE; FROZEN SECTIONS; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; MASTECTOMY; MICROSCOPY; PATHOLOGY, SURGICAL; PROGNOSIS; RISK;

EID: 34047112744     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (74)

1. Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett (1964; New York: Zone Books, 1989).
2. The French legal dispositifs are Decree (décret) no. 2000-570 of 23 June 2000, and Health Ministry order (arrêté) of 2 May 2001.
3. See also Christine Sevilla, Pascale Bouret, Catherine Noguès, et al., "L'offre de tests de prédisposition génétique au cancer du sein ou d'ovaire en France," Médecine/Sciences, 2004, 20: 788-92.
4. Elliott Foucar, "Predictive Genetics and Predictive Morphology Have Certain Similarities," Brit. Med. J., 2001, 323: 514.
5. On the history of the diagnosis of hematological maligancies, see Peter Keating and Alberto Cambrosio, Biomedical Platforms: Realigning the Normal and the Pathological in Late-Twentieth-Century Medicine (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
6. Soraya de Chadarevian and Harmke Kamminga, eds., Molecularization of Biology and Medicine (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1998);
7. Keating and Cambrosio, Biomedical Platforms (n. 4).
8. Lelland J. Rather, The Genesis of Cancer: A Study in the History of Ideas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978);
9. David Cantor, "Cancer," in Companion Encyclopedia to the History of Medicine, ed. William F. Bynum and Roy Porter, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 537-61;
10. Ilana Löwy, "Cancer - The Century of the Transformed Cell," in Science in the Twentieth Century, ed. John Krige and Dominique Pestre (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Press, 1997), pp. 461-77.
11. L. Stephen Jacyna, "The Laboratory and the Clinic: The Impact of Pathology on Surgical Diagnosis in the Glasgow Western Infirmary, 1875-1910," Bull. Hist. Med., 1988, 62: 384-406.
12. Simple mastectomy is the removal of the breast gland alone, while radical mastectomy includes the removal of underlying muscles and regional lymph nodes and is a much more mutilating operation.
13. W. Sampson Handley, Cancer of the Breast and Its Operative Treatment (London: Murray, 1906), pp. 1-2.
14. The majority of historians believe today that Halsted's radical surgery was unnecessarily mutilating, and that it is difficult to assess the clinical efficacy (if any) of early uses of this technique. On the history of breast cancer surgery and of early-detection campaigns, see Jane Austoker, "The Treatment of Choice': Breast Cancer Surgery 1860-1895," Bull. Soc. Soc. Hist. Med., December 1985, 37: 100-107;
15. Barron Lerner, The Breast Cancer Wars: Fear, Hope and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Presss, 2001) ;
16. Robert Aronowitz, "Do Not Delay: Breast Cancer and Time, 1900-1970," Milbank Quart., 2001, 79: 355-86. For a different view of the efficacy of Halsted's mastectomy,
17. see James Olson, Bathsheba's Breast: Women, Cancer, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
18. Ernest M. Dalland, "Untreated Cancer of the Breast," Surg. Gyn. & Obstet., 1927, 44: 264-68. The untreated group included many women diagnosed with inoperable, and there-fore often more advanced, cancer - a finding that may indicate that the curative efficacy of radical mastectomy was even smaller.
19. R. S. Handley, "Gordon Taylor, Breast Cancer and the Middlesex Hospital," Ann. Roy. Coll. Surg. Engl., 1971, 49: 151-64.
20. Janet E. Lane-Claypon, Report on the Late Results of Operation for Cancer of the Breast (London: HMSO, 1928).
21. American Medical Association (AMA), Prevention of Cancer Series, leaflet no. 1 (undated) ; J. C. Bloodgood, What Every One Should Know about Cancer (AMA leaflet, undated) ; Aronowitz, "Do Not Delay" (n. 10).
22. Aronowitz rightly points out the absence of quantitative data on the efficacity of the "do not delay" campaigns (in terms of a reduction of cancer mortality, or a shift to the diagnosis of less-advanced tumors): Aronowitz, "Do Not Delay" (n. 10). Testimonies in medical articles seem to indicate, however, an increase in the number of women who consulted for nonmalignant or "early" lumps in their breast, at least in major cancer-treatment centers.
23. E.g., Alfred Velpeau, Traité des maladies de sein et de la région mammaire (Paris: Masson, 1858) ;
24. Samuel W. Gross, A Practical Treatise of Tumors of the Mammary Gland, Embracing Their Histology, Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment (New York: Appleton, 1880);
25. A. Marmadike Shields, A Clinical Treatise on Diseases of the Breast (London: Macmillan, 1898);
26. Handley, Cancer of the Breast (n. 9).
27. "Discussion on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer of the Breast," Brit. Med. J., 1908 (October 31), 2: 970-81.
28. Joseph Colt Bloodgood, Control of Cancer, AMA Prevention of Cancer Series, no. 7 (text of a speech delivered by Bloodgood, 17 June 1913).
29. Edred M. Corner, in "Discussion of the Diagnosis and Treatment" (n. 17), pp. 976-77.
30. James Ewing, "Precancerous Diseases and Precancerous Lesions, Especially in the Breast," Fourth Report of the Collis P. Huntington Fund for Cancer Research and the Memorial Hospital, 1913-14 (New York: 1913-14), 4: 1-32.
31. Shields, Clinical Treatise (n. 16), p. 34.
32. Ewing, "Precancerous Diseases" (n. 20); William L. Rodman, Diseases of the Breast with Special Reference to Cancer (Philadelphia: Blackinson, 1908).
33. J. Collins Warren, "The Surgeon and the Pathologist: A Plea for Reciprocity as Illustrated by the Consideration of Classification and Treatment of Benign Tumors of the Breast" (talk delivered at the 56th annual session of the AMA, Portland, Ore., 11-14 July 1905; reproduced in an AMA leaflet, printed in Chicago, 1905), Dept. of Rare Books, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
34. Rodman, Diseases of the Breast (n. 22), p. 235.
35. Joseph Colt Bloodgood, "The Relation of Surgical Pathology to Surgical Diagnosis," Detroit Med. J., 1903, 3: 337-52, on p. 338. After the demise of radical mastectomy, the "quotablity" of this sentence was greatly enhaced by an implicit parallel between the brutal treatment of blacks and of women.
36. J. Clark Stewart, "What Is the Proper Surgical Treament of Suspicious Tumors of the Involuting Breast?" JAMA", 1904, 53: 365-69, on p. 366.
37. George Herbert Fink, Cancer and Precancerous Changes (London: Lewis, 1903), pp. 93-95.
38. Stewart, "What Is the Proper Surgical Treament" (n. 26), pp. 366-67.
39. William Jepson, "A Comment on Clark Stewart's, 'What Is the Proper Surgical Treatment of Suspicious Tumors of the Involuting Breast? '"JAMA, 1904, 53: 368.
40. Bloodgood, Control of Cancer (n. 18).
41. Harold J. Stiles, "The Diagnosis and Treatment of Malignant Disease of the Breast," in "Discussion on the Diagnosis and Treatment" (n. 17), p. 973.
42. Bloodgood, Control of Cancer (n, 18).
43. Handley, Cancer of the Breast (n. 9), p. 191.
44. James Wright, "The 1917 New York Biopsy Controversy: A Question of Surgical Incision and the Promotion of Metastasis," Bull. Hist. Med., 1988, 62: 546-62.
45. Bloodgood, Control of Cancer (n. 18).
46. Samuel R. Haythor, "Advantages and Disavantages of the Frozen Section Method for the Diagnosis of Malignancy," Reports of the William H. Singer Memorial Research Laboratory, Pittsburgh, 1931;
47. J. Arthur B. McGraw and Frank W. Hartman, "Present Status of Biopsy," JAMA, 1933, 101:1205-9;
48. James Wright, "The Development of the Frozen Section Technique, the Evolution of Surgical Biopsy, and the Origins of Surgical Pathology," Bull. Hut. Med., 1985, 59: 295-326;
49. Wright, "1917 New York Biopsy Controversy" (n. 34). Some surgeons claimed, however, that they made diagnostic biopsies of breast tumors several days before radical surgeries, with no ill results for the patients: e.g., Kenneth W. Monsarrat, in "Discussion on the Diagnosis and Treatment" (n. 17), pp. 976-77.
50. Stilles, "Diagnosis and Treatment" (n. 31); Wright, "Development of the Frozen Section Technique" (n. 36).
51. Joseph Bloodgood, "When Cancer Becomes a Microscopic Disease, There Must Be a Tissue Diagnosis in the Operating Room," JAMA, 1927, 88:1022-23;
52. Bloodgood, "Biopsy in the Treatment of Malignancy," J. Clin. Lab. Med., 1931, 16: 632-703;
53. McGraw and Hartman, "Present Status of Biopsy" (n. 36);
54. Wright, "Development of the Frozen Section Technique" (n. 36).
55. Committee for the Treatment of Malignant Diseases of the American College of Surgeons (R. B. Greenough, chairman), "Organization of a Service for Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer," Surg. Gyn. & Obstet., 1930, 51: 570-74, on p. 572.
56. Breast Cancer files, Surgical Divisions I and II, New York Hospital, Archives of New York Hospital, New York, N.Y.
57. William H. Sternberg, "The Pathology of Breast Cancer," in Breast Cancer, ed. Albert Segaloff (St. Louis: Mosby, 1958), pp. 46-52, on p. 52.
58. Lane-Claypon, Report (n. 13).
59. Joseph Colt Bloodgood, "Biopsy in Breast Lesions, in Relation to Diagnosis, Treatment and Prognosis, "Proceedings of the Round Table Conference on Cancer, Memorial Hospital, NYC, Ann. Surg., 1935, 162:239-49, on p. 248.
60. Breast Cancer records, 1919-39, Curie Foundation; Surgery reports, 1919-39, ibid., Department of Patients' Records, Curie, Institute, Paris.
61. Amadé Baumgarten, Les maladies de la mammelle (Paris; Ballière, 1908), p. 275.
62. Robert B. Greenough, "Early Diagnosis of Cancer of the Breast," Proceedings of the Round Table Conference (n. 43), Ann. Surg., 1935, 102: 233-38, on p. 238.
63. James Ewing, Neoplastic Diseases: A Treatise on Tumors (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1922), p. 493. Chronic mastitis was initially seen as leading nearly always to the development of a malignant tumor. Later, cystic mastitis was removed from the list of precancerous conditions, and became reclassified as moderately increasing the chances of development of malignancy (in today's language, a moderate risk factor).
64. See S. Warren, "The Relations of Chronic Mastitis to Carcinoma of the Breast," Surg. Gyn. & Obstet., 1940, 71:257-62;
65. Laureen V. Ackerman and Juan A. del Regato, Cancer: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prognosis (St. Louis: Mosby, 1947), pp. 924-29. A related and partly overlapping condition, "fibrocystic breast disease," was seen as a risk element until the 1980s (and for some experts, it remains one today):
66. Susan M. Love, R. S. Gelman, and W. Silen, "Fibrocystic 'Disease' of the Breast-A Nondisease?" NewEngland J. Med., 1982, 307: 1010-14.
67. James Ewing, "Classification of Mammary Cancer," Proceedings of the Round Table Conference (n. 43), Ann. Surg., 1935, 162: 249-52;
68. Ewing, Neoplastic Diseases (n. 47), p. 493.
69. Ewing, Neoplastic Diseases (n. 47), p. 541 (emphasis added).
70. Greenough, "Early Diagnosis" (n. 46).
71. M. C. Tod and E. K. Dawson, "The Diagnosis and Treatment of Doubtful Mammary Tumours," Lancet, 1934, 2: 1041-45.
72. Ibid., p. 1045.
73. The following data were collected from Annual Reports of the Harvard University Cancer Commission, Dept. of Rare Books, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
74. The last category, defined as a "nodular mastitis," appeared in the 1930s: there were no cases of this pathology before 1933, and 31 cases in both 1936/37 and 1937/38 (among, respectively, 81 and 87 diagnoses of benign breast conditions). The sudden prominence of "mazoplasia" (a mild version of chronic mastitis) may have reflected a more finely tuned classification of the entity "cystic mastitis" or "cystic disease," the inclusion of women earlier classified as healthy in the category "benign breast disease," or both.