He believed that tumors resulted from entrapment of black bile-this theory held until the sixteenth century when people started to perform autopsies. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: Our understanding of cancer has exploded in the last few centuries.Īround 160 CE, Greco-Roman physician Galen developed the first known theory about cancer. But this book can make it suck less by informing you about it! Let’s go! Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are the ways that we currently treat cancer.Ĭancer sucks.Infections, chemicals, hormones, radiation, and heredity all affect your risk of getting cancer.We’ve come a long way in understanding cancer.Here’s the book summarized in just 3 lessons: We learn the fascinating, easy-to-digest science of what happens to cause the disease and what we can do to prevent and treat it. In The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, doctor, and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee brings us an in-depth look into cancer’s past, present, and future. It’s not like it’s a mystery- science has come leaps and bounds in the last century to explain exactly what causes it and how we can treat it. With statistics like that, it’s no wonder why we all know someone who’s had it.īut though we encounter it often, very few of us actually understand much about it.

About 40 percent of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lives. Virtually every one of us on earth is touched by cancer in some way. Listen to the audio of this summary with a free reading.fm account*:

The emperor of maladies