Gender and Cancer in Britain, 1860–1910

Abstract

Historical work on cancer has suggested that a range of political, social, and medical concerns stimulated the emergence of cancer as a public health problem in the early 20th century.I argue that anxiety about cervical cancer mortality was instrumental in establishing cancer as a major focus of concern for the British public health service. This development was closely bound to assumptions about the association of gender with cancer, the redefinition of cancer as a surgical problem, the politics of empire, and the climate of public and medical disquiet about gynecological surgery engendered by feminist and antivivisectionist critiques of medical science.