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Nearly 5,000 years ago, Egyptian physician Imhotep observed a grotesque but revealing detail about tumors: some grew so large that they burst open—and eventually disappeared. Seeing this happen, ancient texts suggest, he developed a radical cancer treatment: pierce patients’ tumors and then wait to see if they got smaller, cancer researcher Andrew Zloza of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago tells The Scientist. Sometimes they did.
With no knowledge of the human immune system, Imhotep had hit on an essential connection between tumors and infections that wouldn’t appear again in the scientific literature until the turn of the 20th century, when bone surgeon and cancer researcher William Coley began injecting live bacteria and later bacterial toxins into individuals with sarcoma. Although Coley’s technique showed some success in treating patients’ cancer, it was quickly abandoned in favor of emerging chemo-therapy and radiation therapy, Zloza says.
Imhotep developed ...
