Cancer: A Prehistoric Disease Still a Threat to the Modern Man

Copyright: © 2013 Woldemeskel M. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Cancer is a general term used to denote malignant neoplasms in humans and animals that if untreated often end up with fatal metastasis. The term “cancer” originated from the word “crab” (karkinos) applied to malignant tumors by the ancient Greeks. It is adopted by the Romans (Latin cancer means crab) and is still in use in the contemporary scientific literature. The most ancient records dated from the paleopathological evidences indicate the existence of cancer in dinosaurs of the Mesozoic and in prehistoric cave man and his animals in the remote past. Later in human history, it was known that Greek and Roman physicians were well acquainted with the different types of malignant diseases specific to each organ [1].