Summary & Study Guide - The Emperor of All Maladies by Lee Tang

A Biography of Cancer

The must-read summary of "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Summary & study guide - the emperor of all maladies

You will never look at cancer the same way.

This book is a summary of "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee. 

This book chronicles a fascinating "biography" of cancer—from its first documented appearance five thousand years ago through the battles in the 20th century to cure, control, and subdue it, to a new understanding of its biology.  It recounts centuries of discoveries, successes, and failures in the cat and mouse battle against cancer, bringing cancer research and cancer biology to the lay public.

Read this book to get an informative overview of the evolution of healthcare and health research, in addition to the specific history of cancer.

This guide includes:

Value-added of this guide:

Genre: STUDY AIDS / Study Guides

Secondary Genre: HEALTH & FITNESS / Diseases / Cancer

Language: English

Keywords: leukemia, cancer, cancer autobiography, cancer research, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, prevent cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer

Word Count: 23.500

Sample text:

If Farber had asked any doctors in the clinic upstairs about the likelihood of developing an anti-leukemic drug, they would have told him not to bother. Childhood leukemia had confused and frustrated doctors ever since its discovery on March 19, 1845, by a Scottish physician named John Bennett. The patient was a 28-year-old man with a mysterious swelling in his spleen. In the course of a few weeks, the patient had spiraled from symptom to symptom - fevers, flashes of bleeding, sudden abdominal pain, swollen tumors spouting in his armpits, and his neck. Bennett treated him with leeches and purging, but to no avail. At the autopsy, Bennett concluded that his patient had succumbed to an infection because his blood was full of white blood cells. He called his case "a suppuration of blood."

Four months later, a young German professor at the University of Wurzburg named Rudolf Virchow published a similar case. The patient's blood was overgrown with white blood cells, forming dense and pulpy pools in her spleen. At autopsy, Virchow found layers of white blood floating above the red. He called the disease "weisses Blut" - white blood. In 1847, he changed the name to "leukemia" - from "leukos", the Greek word for "white".

Virchow was a pathologist in training. He believed all living things were made of cells. And that cells could grow in only two ways: either by increasing its number or by increasing its size. He called these two modes hyperplasia and hypertrophy. Examining cancerous growths through his microscope, Virchow concluded that cancer was hyperplasia in its extreme form.


Book translation status:

The book is available for translation into any language except those listed below:

LanguageStatus
French
Already translated. Translated by Louise Chaumont
Author review:
Excellent work!
Italian
Already translated. Translated by Federica Melchior
Author review:
Excellent quality and timely delivery.
Portuguese
Already translated. Translated by Ariane Zabaleta
Author review:
Excellent quality and on-time delivery, always.
Spanish
Already translated. Translated by Jeannette Antezana

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