Shunned Like Plague Victims: Fear of Contagion and the Tragic Birth of the First Cancer Hospitals

In the dark period from the late 17th century to the middle of the 18th century, cancer patients had to struggle not only with physical pain but also with society's fear and disgust toward them. A medical authority's declaration of "contagiousness" had become a social verdict driving patients from their homes and cities.

Closed doors and the shadow of the fear of "miasma"

At that time, cancer was characterized, particularly in advanced stages, by ulcerating, foul-smelling, bleeding wounds. Physicians firmly adhered to the theory of "Miasma" (Bad Air) in which diseases were believed to spread through the air.

Families had become afraid to keep relatives with cancer in the same home and abandoned them in the streets. Cancer patients were seen as cursed figures like people with leprosy in the Middle Ages. In institutions such as Saint-Lazare in Poland, these patients were commonly given a single name: "The Putrefying" (Putrefied).

A light of compassion in Reims and the city's revolt

While patients writhed in desperation, the cathedral priest in the French city of Reims, Jean Godinot (1661-1749), broke his silence. Donating 25000 pounds from his own fortune, Godinot had a dedicated institution built to serve cancer patients alone.

Under public pressure and unending hysteria, the local authorities were forced to give in in 1779. This first cancer hospital in history was moved, together with its patients, outside the city walls to a deserted hill far from residential areas. In the history of oncology, "spatial exclusion" has its most concrete evidence in this event.

Specialized oncology centers born of fear

History's great irony lies here: "Specialized Oncology Centers," now considered among modern medicine's greatest achievements, first emerged not from a need for scientific development but from society's fear of contagion and desire to keep patients out of sight.

The public had exiled them outside the city, yet the patients lying in those isolated wards had unknowingly created a laboratory setting in which medicine could examine this mysterious disease in a "collective and focused" way for the first time. This process of isolation laid the groundwork for new theories that would prove cancer was not actually contagious but related to the body's internal systems (lymphatic highways).

In our Day 53 article, we will visit the world of François de le Boë Sylvius, who brought chemistry and medicine together with the claim that cancer was not "black bile" but "acidified lymph fluid."