New Book | Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century
In the U.S., October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Friday, October 18th, is National Mammography Day. From the publisher:
Marjo Kaartinen, Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1848933644, £60 / $99.
Early modern physicians and surgeons tried desperately to understand breast cancer, testing new medicines and radically improving operating techniques. In this study, the first of its kind, Marjo Kaartinen explores the emotional responses of patients and their families to the disease in the long eighteenth century.
Using a wide range of primary sources, she examines the ways in which knowledge about breast cancer was shared through networks of advice that patients formed with fellow sufferers. By focusing on the women who struggled with the disease as well as the doctors that treated them, much is revealed about early modern attitudes to cancer and how patients experienced – and were considered to experience – the cancerous body.
C O N T E N T S
Preface
‘One of the Most Grievous and Rebellious Diseases’: Defining, Diagnosing and the Causes of Cancer
2 ‘But Sad Resources’: Treating Cancer in the Eighteenth Century
3 Women’s Agency and Role in Choice of Treatment
4 ‘So Frightful to the Very Imagination’: Pain, Emotions and Cancer in the Breast
Epilogue
Enfilade 
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