Marjo Kaartinen - Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century

STUDIES FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR
CULTURAL HISTORY

TITLES IN THIS SERIES

1 Statistics, Public Debate and the State, 18001945
Jean-Guy Prvost and Jean-Pierre Beaud

2 A History of Emotions, 12001800
Jonas Liliequist (ed.)

3 A Cultural History of the Radical Sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area
Anthony Ashbolt

FORTHCOMING TITLES

Crime and the Fascist State, 18501940
Tiago Pires Marques

BREAST CANCER IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

BY

Marjo Kaartinen

First published 2013 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Taylor & Francis 2013
Marjo Kaartinen 2013

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BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Kaartinen, Marjo, 1964
Breast cancer in the eighteenth century. (Studies for the International Society for Cultural History)
1. Breast Cancer Patients History 18th century. 2. Medicine and psychology History 18th century. I. Title II. Series
362.19699449009033-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-84893-364-4 (hbk)

Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Through the years, a number of people have taken interest in my project: they have sent me notes on sources and patients, commented on my papers and ideas, read my manuscripts and helped in every possible way imaginable. I am grateful beyond words. My thanks go to Natalie Zemon Davis, Vinm Nikkanen, Lauren Kassell, Laura Gowing, Tom Linkinen, Alexandra Lembert, Pivi Pahta, Eva Johanna Holmberg, Matti Rissanen, Wendy Churchill, Marika Rsnen, Miri Rubin, Sally M. Miller, Mary Beth Norton, Elaine Chalus, Kirsi Tuohela, Charlotte Merton, Anu Korhonen, Rita Hirst, Ellen Valle, Anne Laurence, Caroline Bowden, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, Anne Summers, Deborah Simonton, Hanne Koivisto, Amy Erickson, Raija Vainio, Jinty Nelson, Natalie Bennett, Eero Perunka, Minna Nevala and my anonymous referees. There are some whom my thanks no longer reach: Patricia Crawford and Peg Keranen are greatly missed. I am in deep gratitude to Ellen Valle for correcting my English. Collectively, I would like to thank the editorial board of the series and everyone at Pickering & Chatto as well as everyone at the various conferences and seminars who have given me feedback, and I want to express my deepest gratitude and debt to my fantastic colleagues and students at the Department of Cultural History, University of Turku, and last but not least, all my wonderful friends and family.

Great thanks go to the University Libraries of Turku, bo Akademi, Cambridge and the University of California, Los Angeles, the Huntington Library, the British Library, the Wellcome Library, the (past) Wellcome Institute in London, and of course to my alma mater, the University of Turku.

Research for this book has been generously supported by the Academy of Finland.

Eighteenth-century breast cancer was a nightmarish, greatly feared disease. As a disease, cancer horrified people so much because of its slow and usually extremely painful progress towards a torturous death. Cancer in the breast1 was considered the most common of cancers and the most dangerous: it seemed to kill with frightening certainty. Since antiquity, it had been thought that breast cancer was cancer per se; the breast was considered the most common location of cancer: an anonymous author wrote that when [o]ne has a Cancer in any part besides, Twenty have them in their Breasts.2 Eighteenth-century authors have left us many suggestions relating to how common they thought the disease to be: it was considered frequent, and a surgeon further corroborated that [i]f it were necessary, I could give an almost incredible Number of Instances, where such Circumstances have ensued. Some considered London specifically. It was thought that breast cancer was common in London: in this over-grown metropolis there are great number affected in the same manner, and another surgeon testified that [i]n London I have been consulted in many hundred cases.3

While common, and even though cancer was in theory considered usually incurable, physicians, surgeons and other healers tried desperately to understand cancer and eagerly tested new medicines, and surgeons radically improved their operating techniques. Cancer was and had been a metaphor of many evils since ancient times, used to describe nearly anything seriously damaging, various phenomena that ate something alive.

Typically, cancer in the breast was immediately suspected and feared if a breast developed a peculiar lump or became painful; luckily, of course, many men and women were relieved to notice that these signs passed without any further trouble. The trouble was that much too often the first scare proved justified.

This book is about cancer in the breast in eighteenth-century Britain; it discusses the myriad ways in which this disease was understood, diagnosed and treated, and explores the ways in which those who had cancer or suspected to have cancer dealt with this illness. Regardless of the severity of cancer as well as the indescribable painfulness of premodern treatments, this book argues that the patients remained agents of their lives until the very end. They never gave up their right to make decisions concerning their own bodies. Finally, it looks at the emotional turmoil this gruel disease and its progress aroused in patients, their friends and families as well as their caretakers.

While as much emphasis is put on the sufferers point of view as possible, it is the medical word that inevitably dominates eighteenth-century discussion on cancer. Few patients wrote about their experiences of cancer or their treatments. The famous account of Fanny Burney from the early nineteenth century is without a peer in the history of premodern mastectomy: no-one else described his or her experience in such detail and with such realism. This letter which Burney wrote to her sister nine months after her operation must thus be taken as an exception, and with a pinch of salt: while it is tempting to generalize about her experience, it is also risky to draw far reaching conclusions about one individuals and especially a professional authors experience of an operation. Regardless of its limitations, this letter is used in this work, of course, as are all the accounts I have been able to locate. Without doubt more personal patient evidence can and hopefully will be found in the future.