A History of Prostate Cancer: Cancer, Men and Medicine

by Helen Valier

Overview

This book offers a comprehensive and inclusive insight into the history of prostate cancer and its sufferers. Until recently, little practical help could be offered for men afflicted with the devastating diseases of the genitourinary organs. This is despite complaints of painful urination from aging men being found in ancient medical manuscripts, despite the anatomical discoveries of the European Renaissance and despite the experimental surgical researches of the eighteen and nineteenth centuries. As diseases of the prostate, including prostate cancer, came to be better understood in the early twentieth century, therapeutic nihilism continued as curative radical surgeries and radiotherapy failed. The therapeutic ‘turn’ came with hormonal therapies, itself a product of the explosive growth of U.S. biomedicine from the 1940s onwards. By the 1990s, prostate cancer screening had become a somewhat ubiquitous but controversial feature of the medical encounter for American menas they aged, which greatly influenced the treatment pathways and identity of the male patient: as victim, as hero, and ultimately, as consumer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137565952
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	08/05/2016
Series:	Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	241
File size:	444 KB

About the Author

Helen Valier is Director of the Medicine&Society Program at The Honors College, University of Houston, USA. Her teaching and research interests fall broadly within western and colonial/postcolonial medicine and technology from late nineteenth to late twentieth century.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Cancer and the making of modern medicine. - 2. The problematic prehistory of prostate cancer. - 3. Surgery and Specialization. - 4. Sex, Hormones, and Quantification. - 5. Cancer and clinical trials. - 6. Screening, Patients, and the Politics of Prevention. - 7. Radiotherapy and Evidence in an Age of High Technology. - 8. Conclusions: Medicine, masculinity, and the problems of the prostate

Editorial Reviews

Valier takes on the ambitious task of writing a history of prostate cancer from ancient times through to the present day. … This book-length treatment of prostate cancer is a much-needed addition to cancer history. Valier does a good job of indicating areas of interest and potential further inquiry in her important subject.” (Laura Dawes, The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 50 (2), June, 2017)

“The text is well written, scholarly and richly referenced, making it a useful starting point for learning about the history of prostate cancer in all its aspects. … Valier delivers a worthwhile lesson about the unintended consequences of medical innovation that is relevant to the trainee doctors, healthcare professionals, biomedical researchers, industry executives and policy makers who will determine how new technologies affect the wellbeing of the public in the future.” (Edward J. Wawrzynczak, BSHM British Society for the History of Medicine, bshm.org.uk, October, 2016)

From the Publisher