100 Years of Advances Against Cancer - 1900s-1930s
1903 |
Radium is found effective in the treatment of tumors (Marie and Pierre Curie isolated radium in 1898). |
1907 |
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is founded. |
1911 |
Peyton Rous discovers a virus that causes cancer in chickens (Rous sarcoma virus). |
1912 |
Cancer cells are grown in the laboratory, the first long-term "tissue culture." |
1913 |
The first known article on cancer's warning signs is published in a popular women's magazine (Ladies' Home Journal).
A nationwide organization dedicated to public education about cancer is formed (the American Society for the Control of Cancer, which later became the American Cancer Society).
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1915 |
Coal tar gives rabbits cancer in experimental proof of carcinogenesis. The theory that chemicals had cancer-causing potential began with observations more than a century earlier on the high rate of cancer among chimney sweeps. |
1922 |
The Public Health Service opens a Special Cancer Investigations Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. |
1928 |
George Papanicolaou finds vaginal cell smears (the Pap smear) can reveal the presence of cervical cancer. |
1930 |
The National Institute of Health is established by the Ransdell Act. |
1937 |
Legislation signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the National Cancer Institute to support research related to the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. |
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