What date was cancer discovered? – Are we too Clean Zone

Question: What date was cancer discovered?

Asked by 07hesn to Sarah, Panos, Michael, Mark, MarkF on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
- Mark Fogg answered on 15 Jun 2010:
  
  Cancer has been around as long as humans. I think it was the ancient Egyptians that may have first documented it, but I could easily be wrong.
- Panos Soultanas answered on 16 Jun 2010:
  
  Good question 07hesn..! Difficult to be absolutely certain. Ancient peoples knew about this disease. In fact the ancient Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates introduced the term ‘carcinos’ to describe any tumour. So I guess it would have been a long time ago by ancient people but we don’t know exactly when.
- Michael Loughlin answered on 16 Jun 2010:
  
  http://www.cancer.org/docroot/cri/content/cri_2_6x_the_history_of_cancer_72.asp
  
  here is a good link looking at cancer through the ages Certainly ancient civilisations recoginsed cancerous tumours and tried to deal with them
  also the webpage gives a useful timeleine as to what was believed to be the causes at different times in histroy
  
  thanks for a good question that got me to look things up
- Mark Travis answered on 16 Jun 2010:
  
  Good question! As cancer is caused by cells that keep dividing when they shouldn’t, as long as humans have been around they will have been getting cancer. The first recorded diagnosis of cancer was in Egyptian times around 1600 B.C., so a very long time ago….
- Sarah Burl answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  Cancer was probably around a long time before we named it as such. The oldest known description and surgical treatment of cancer was discovered in Egypt and dates back to approximately 1600 B.C. The word cancer comes from the Greek word carcinos (leading to the word carcinoma) and swellings were called oncos (leading to modern word Oncology).

Question: What date was cancer discovered?

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