Overview

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding the Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America. The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

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9780198885092

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The Cancer Problem offers an excellent, well-researched, and often surprising history of this disease and the professionalization surrounding it. There have been few historical studies of cancer in the nineteenth century, and every chapter of The Cancer Problem offers original insights. * Pamela K. Gilbert, Journal of British Studies * The book will be welcomed by historians of Britain, scholars interested in cross-cultural studies, and historians of medicine and science. * J. Rankin, CHOICE Connect, Vol. 59 No. 8 * It would not surprise me if this monograph is still considered a seminal study in decades to come due to its high quality and breaking of new academic ground. * Ian Miller, Ulster University * This book is certainly an important addition to the historiography of cancer, as it treads the fields of both cultural history and the more traditional history of medicine and science. Indeed, this book will be an important addition to historians studying the history of cancer, but it should likewise be of interest to a variety of scholars studying broader topics in medical history, the history of science, or the cultural and social history of England. * Dimitry Zakharov, Canadian Journal of Health History *

Author Information

Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster is a social, cultural, and medical historian of modern Britain. She is Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at King's College London in 2017 and has published widely in journals such as Social History of Medicine, Medical Humanities, and the British Medical Journal.

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