Introduction: cancer control and prevention in the twentieth century.

I thank Matt Newson for research assistance as a 2004 Summer Intern at the NLM. Also helpful in formulating my ideas for this introduction were the commentaries by Dorothy Porter, Patrice Pinell, Charles Rosenberg, Barbara Clow, John Parascandola, and Nikolai Krementsov at the “Cancer in the Twentieth Century” workshop held at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, 15–17 November 2004. John Pickstone and Christine Holmberg read and made valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper, parts of which were presented at two “History of Cancer” conferences organized in France by the INCa Cancer Observatory and the Institute for the History of Medicine and Health of Geneva University: one at the National Cancer Institute, Boulogne Billancourt, Paris, 18–19 May 2006, and the other at Moulin XII, Ste Gemme Moronval, France, 18–20 October 2006. 1. On cancer control in the United States, see Lester Breslow, Daniel Wilner, Larry Agran, et al., A History of Cancer Control in the United States, with Emphasis on the Period 1946–1971, 4 vols., prepared by the History of Cancer Control Project, UCLA School of Public Health, pursuant to Contract no. N01-CN-55172 (Bethesda, Md.: Division of Cancer Control and Rehabilitation, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda; Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Control and Rehabilitation, 1977); James T. Patterson, The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); Barron H. Lerner, The Breast Cancer Wars: Fear, Hope and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Kirsten E. Gardner, Early Detection: Women, Cancer, and Awareness Campaigns in the Twentieth-Century United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). On France, Germany, and Canada, see Patrice Pinell, The Fight against Cancer: France 1890–1940 (London: Routledge, 2002); Robert N. Proctor, The