Cancer

[Earl_of_Sandwhich]

I watched Susan Sontag on C-Span last night, and she said something that shocked me: when she first had cancer, in the late 1970’s, it was considered shameful to have this disease. A personal disgrace. Even correspondence from the hospital where she was being treated didn’t contain the words “Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center,” but rather, simply the address.
Twenty-five years ago is hardly the Dark Ages. Does anyone here have anything to share regarding peoples’ attitudes toward cancer a mere twenty-five years ago?

[bleach]

I did a quick google search and found this page, which had this paragraph:

In July 1885, former president Ulysses S. Grant died of cancer of the tongue, caused by many years of smoking and drinking. The extensive newspaper coverage of this event greatly elevated the public discussion of this previously “shameful” disease".(4) In the Victorian era cancer was a private matter, seldom discussed. Grant’s illness helped to bring cancer out in the open.

The footnote (4) references this book:
Paterson JT. The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture. Harvard Press: Cambridge. Massachusetts, 1987.

It sounds like an interesting book because I had never considered whether cancer had ever been stigmatized.