Is Cancer Contagious? Rembrandt's Doctor Nicolaes Tulp and a Tragic Error in Medical History
In this article
Day 51 (The History of Cancer in 365 Days Series)
The story of how scientific enlightenment, beginning with the discovery of lymphatic fluids, turned into a dark hysteria over "contagion."
The Famous Doctor in Rembrandt's Painting
You have surely seen one of the best-known works in art history, the Dutch painter Rembrandt's 1632 painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" . The confident, charismatic physician wearing a hat, dissecting a cadaver's arm to show the anatomy of muscles and tendons to the surgeons gathered around him, is Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1593-1674).
Dr. Tulp was not only Amsterdam's most famous physician, but also the city's mayor. He meticulously kept his patients' medical records for years and, in 1641, published his famous collection of rare cases, Observationes Medicae (Medical Observations). Within its pages lay the sad story that would mislead oncology history for centuries and cause widespread panic.
A Mother, a Child, and Deadly Milk
In his book, Dr. Tulp described the case of a woman with advanced, ulcerated (open to the outside), bleeding breast cancer. In the medical practices of that time, "suckling" could be used to relieve the pressure of breast abscesses and swellings or drain accumulated fluid.
The Moment a Historic Error Was Born
According to Dr. Tulp's records, the woman's young son, who suckled milk from her (or, according to some historical accounts, a servant in the household), developed a huge, fatal tumor in his jaw and mouth shortly afterward. When Dr. Tulp linked these two independent events, a dangerous conclusion took shape in his mind: the cancer in the child's jaw had been caused by sucking the cancerous fluid from his mother's breast! Tulp wrote this verdict in his book in unequivocal terms: "Cancer can pass from one body to another just like a poison; cancer is contagious!" (Contagion Theory).
No Different From "Plague": The Birth of Contagion Theory
Dr. Nicolaes Tulp was not alone in this belief. Another famous Portuguese physician of the same period, Zacutus Lusitani (1575-1642), had observed cancer developing in succession in every member of a family with three children living in the same house (probably a genetic syndrome), and claimed that cancer was highly contagious.
Addressing all surgeons and physicians in Europe, Lusitani and Tulp declared that fluids from the wounds of patients with open, ulcerated cancers were extremely poisonous, and that healthy people must keep well away from these patients.
Today, thanks to molecular biology, we know that cancer is definitely not contagious . The mass in the child's jaw in Dr. Tulp's case was probably a childhood tumor triggered by Epstein-Barr virus (such as Burkitt lymphoma), or a simple bacterial infection that had become severe.
In the 17th century, this false "Contagion Theory" ceased to be merely a medical article and turned into social hysteria. If cancer was as contagious as leprosy or plague, what were cancer patients doing among healthy people?
In our 52nd article, we will open one of history's darkest chapters of "Social Oncology": we will read about the tragedy of cancer patients expelled from hospitals and excluded from society like people with leprosy, and the founding of Europe's first "Isolated Cancer Houses."
Healing Means Keeping the Patient Within Society
The history of cancer is not only the history of cells and drugs, but also of fears, misconceptions, and stigmatization. The misconception of "contagion," into which even brilliant minds of the time such as Dr. Nicolaes Tulp fell, inflicted far greater suffering on cancer patients than the disease itself, isolating them from loved ones and society for centuries.
What we now call "precision guidance" in oncology is more than giving the right drug. It also means freeing patients from those old, dark psychological burdens that made them feel "plague-stricken," and providing social restoration alongside biological restoration. Cancer is not contagious; the only things that are contagious are the hope and compassion that accurate information brings.
Historical and Scientific Sources
- 1. Tulp, N. (1641). Observationes Medicae. Amsterdam: Lodewijk Elzevir.
- 2. Faguet, G. B. (2015). A Brief History of Cancer: Age-Old Milestones Underlying Our Current Knowledge Database. International Journal of Cancer.
- 3. Mukherjee, S. (2010). The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Scribner.
- 4. Scholl, J. et al. (2021). Contagion of Cancer. In: History of Oncology.
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