• Question: why is cancer called cancer is there a reason that its called cancer??

    Asked by cupcake94 to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 7 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      The word ‘cancer’ is Greek for ‘crab’ and it was noticed that when the surface of a tumour was cut away it resembled a crab

    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      Hi Cupcake, good question. I was wondering the same thing a while ago and I found quite a nice story but I’m not sure how much is true.

      The ancient Greeks knew about various diseases and some they came across were cancers. They noticed that the tumours usually developed as a main clump, but they found many smaller lumps further away. They imagined it was like a crab with a large body and smaller legs – and the Greek word for crab cancer (spelt differently but pronounced the same).

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      There was this old doctor in ancient Greece called Hippocrates apparently he said that tumours looked like crabs with the tumour in the middle and blood vessels on the outside looking like crab legs. Cancer means crab in latin.

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 8 Mar 2014:

      The other guys are right – the name cancer comes from a Greek word ‘karkinos’ that started being used to describe tumours nearly 2,500 years ago!

      The Greeks also used the word ‘Onkos’ (which means a heavy load or a burden) to describe cancer. We still use this word today too – a doctor who specifically works on cancer is called an Oncologist.

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