The studies about cancer in the nineteenth century and its construction as a medical problem at the beginning of the twentieth century in Brazil

Abstract

We analysed studies on the aetiology of cancer developed along the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, seeking to understand how the concepts related to the mechanisms of disease were constructed and reinterpreted in this period. We found that cancer became an entity increasingly more discussed and studied. This phenomenon seems to relate to an increase in the research focusing on cell functioning headed by investigators such as Johannes Müller and Rudolf Virchow, whose work allowed for a better understanding of the conditions likely to trigger the development of tumours. In Brazil, the perception of cancer as a public health problem began to change in the early decades of the twentieth century, mostly based on the work by physicians Antônio Augusto de Azevedo Sodré and Olympio Viriato Portugal. As we further point out, this development occurred within a context in which the medical attention still focused on diseases with greater social impact, such as tuberculosis.