Volume 25, Number 17 · November 9, 1978
The Big C
By Lewis Thomas
Conquering Cancer
by Lucien Israël, translated by Joan Pinkham
Random House, 217 pp., $10.00
When I was a medical student, long ago in the mid-1930s, the disease to worry about the most was tuberculosis. It was all around. Anyone could catch it, at any time, from infancy to old age, and there was really nothing much to be done about it. You might survive if you were lucky, and that was that. Your chances were somewhat better when you were lucky enough to have it spotted early and took to your bed, preferably in one of the great number of state hospitals or private sanitaria built for the exclusive care of TB. Rest was the only marginally useful treatment: rest for the whole body in bed, and technologically induced rest for the affected tissue by injecting air into the pleural space to collapse the lung temporarily, or cutting away the ribs to cause permanent collapse. There were no drugs of any value.
Review, 2744 words
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