Writing a book charting cancer’s journey through history seems an odd method of escaping the intensity of training in cancer medicine. However, it soon becomes clear why Sidhartha Mukherjee took on this task. He does not see cancer as an alien invader but a part of ourselves- a part that if we wish to manage, we must first strive to understand. Just as the patients he treats become master storytellers, he believes cancer too has its story.

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In 1600BC, an Egyptian doctor records the first known description of cancer. When considering treatment he simply comments ‘none’.  For the following several thousand years, cancer was the unmentionable ‘C’ word, an unsolvable and painful enigma. In the 1950s, The New York Times blocked an advert aiming to form a support group for women with breast cancer. The reason- the words ‘cancer and ‘breast’ were too indelicate and might worry the public; ‘disease of the chest wall’ was deemed to be a safer bet.