Cancer is not a consequence of a modern, unhealthy lifestyle. According to the American Cancer Society, going back millions of years, cancer was already leaving its mark in the animal kingdom. Scientists have found evidence of cancer on animal fossils, particularly dinosaur bones, dating from 70 to 80 million years ago.

During 3000 BCE in Egypt, tumors were discovered in the fossilized bones of ancient mummies, showing that cancer has existed for thousands of years. During this era, the oldest written description of cancer was found in the Edwin Smith Papyrus, which described cancer as a “bulging tumor of the breast.”

A Greek doctor named Hippocrates, who lived from 460 to 370 BCE, used the words carcinos and carcinoma, Greek terms meaning “crab” to describe a tumor that looked like a crab in action. Hundreds of years later, a Roman doctor named Celsus translated these Greek terms into Latin, giving us the word we still use today: cancer.

More influential people continued to contribute to the study of cancer. Galen, a Greek doctor, was the first person to describe tumors as “oncos”, (swelling in Greek), and from then on, the birth of oncology, the study of cancer treatment and diagnosis.

Early theories from thousands of years ago suggested that cancer was a punishment created by divine intervention to penalize a person who had sinned. While Hippocrates claimed that an imbalance in a person’s fluids can cause cancer. Moreover, other theories about its origin, such as chronic inflammation, lymph fluid problems, and untreated infections, could be one of its many feasible origins.

Cancer still remains perplexing to people because of its complexity in origin. Multitudes of theories have been made in the hopes of understanding the causes of cancer and how to put an end to it.