Cancer, as a disease, has existed all along with man. Hippocrates, twenty-five centuries ago, called it karkinois because the swollen blood vessels going and coming from the tumor mass, gave the appearance of the claws of a crab. Susruta described cancer as a tumor which would ulcerate and would not cure and “sow it s seeds in other parts of the body.”

Knowledge about cancer has been gradually gathered over the centuries. Incidence of cancer is increasing in most parts of the world. Cancer being more common in older people, increasing life span of man is providing more and more candidates for getting the disease.

Smoking of cigarettes, air pollution and increasing use of chemicals, pesticides in particular which in one form or another enter our bodies, act as direct causes of cancer.

Surgery to treat it has been used since centuries ago. Radiation was used to treat breast cancer within one year of Roentgen’s discovery World War Two, provided the first drug in the form of nitrogen mustard to kill cancer cells.

As the human body grows from infancy to adulthood, the cells belonging to different tissues and organs divide and subdivide until no more increase of the cells is required except for the normal wear and tear of the body. Normally the rate at which an organ should grow and when it should stop growing, is under the control of the body itself.

In the 1950s, only 30 per cent cancers were curable. By 1977, that percentage had risen to 41. By 1980, 45 per cent of all serious cancers were curable; this percentage is increasing fast.

Most important than cure is the prevention of cancer. We know that 80 per cent of all cancers are associated with environmental causes: smoking, chewing tobacco, dietary substances, alcohol consumption, radiation, work-place substance exposure, drugs, etc.

Fighting cancer is not just hoping to discover a “magic bullet” to annihilate it. It is much broader a problem: early detection, curative measures, rehabilitation of the patient psychological problems faced by a patient and his relatives.

Remarkable strides have been made in fighting cancer during the last two decades. The author feels that spreading knowledge is itself a step towards fighting cancer.