THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES. A Biography of Cancer By Siddhartha Mukherjee. Source: sharonhenning.blogspot.com
What is it all about
I have always have this morbid fascination with cancer. A disease with its own mind and temperaments. As an internal medicine physician – I often deal with cancer patients from the early stages to the more advanced palliative cases. As a doctor – I have been fighting this war against cancer alongside my patients. The fight seems never ending. I have shed so many tears for the patients I have lost. I have shed happy tears as well for those who triumphed over it. This is the life story of cancer as told from the eyes of Siddhartha Mukherjee – who is an oncologist, researcher, and award-winning science writer. It is a tale of individuals whose lives have been touched by cancer – either patients who are battling their own personal war against the disease as well as the health care professionals who made it their life mission to hunt and kill malignancies.
It is a very old disease. Its history spans from the ancient times of Imhotep, an Egyptian physician – whose papyrus stated there were no therapy for the tumor that was “cool to touch, bulging and spread all over the breast” – the earliest account of breast cancer. Malignant tumor remains have been found in ancient Egyptian and Peruvian mummies.
It was in the time of Hippocrates, around 400 BC, that a word for cancer first appeared in the medical literature: karkinos, from the Greek word for “crab.” The tumor, with its clutch of swollen blood vessels around it, reminded Hippocrates of a crab dug in the sand with its legs spread in a circle.
Excerpt From: Siddhartha Mukherjee. “The Emperor of All Maladies.”
The book starts with how Sidney Faber’s relentless drive to cure leukemia in children in the time where acute leukemia kills children within weeks of its diagnosis. He went on to develop drug regimens that managed to put many children with leukemia into remission. His work paved the way for therapies that cure thousands of patients in the decades to come, allowing most childhood cancer patients to live long, healthy lives. Mukherjee also chronicled how we humans fight cancer with knives –from the ancient days of Atossa, the Persian queen to the era where surgical oncologist combine adjuvant chemotherapy a.k.a cytototoxic warfare with their scalpel skills. We also learn more on how cancers came about which lead to preventive measures that would stop cancer from even happening.
The book ended where we currently are in our journey to combat cancer. Thanks to the latest advances in genetics – the discovery on oncogenes – we have devised new ways to fight cancer. The discovery led to the use of targeted therapies against cancer DNA – effectively disabling it from propagating.
Yet, despite these victories – we cannot deny that cancer will find its way to relapse again. Mukherjee never fails to remind us that no matter how much humans have discovered and succeed in stopping cancer cells – the cells can remain immortal forevermore. In the end, so many lives still succumbed. This reminds us how much human we are as we continue to struggle in our ongoing fight to stop this disease.
Who should read this book
Anyone whose lives have been touched by cancer – who wants to understand it.
I find the writing is still comprehensible and not very jargony for those without medical background yet I feel those with medical training (especially in surgery, oncology, public health and internal medicine) would probably be more appreciative of it.
Why should you read this book
To get an insight on how cancer evolved to become one of the most prolific killing disease that the world has ever seen and how doctors continue to struggle to find its cure.
Dr. Nur Hidayati is an internal medicine specialist with special interest in infectious disease and nephrology. She is a permanent columnist for the Malaysian Medical Gazette. Learn more about her on The Team page.