How did cancer, a pathology identified for over 2000 years, turn suddenly at the beginning of the twentieth century into the scourge of our modern times?
Why and how did an illness that is not an epidemic, and is not contagious, end up being considered a threat to the very balance of society?
Between the two World Wars an illness that mainly affects adults over fifty years old became so prominent that it superseded both tuberculosis and syphilis in importance.
As Patrice Pinell shows, the effect of cancer in France before World War Two reached far beyond the question of its mortality rates. Pinell's socio-historical approach to the early developments in the fight against cancer describes how scientific, therapeutic, philanthropic, ethical, social, economics and political interest combined to transform medicine.