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Cancer: A ‘Female’ Disease

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Gender and Cancer in England, 1860-1948

Part of the book series: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History ((MBSMH))

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Abstract

The long-standing association of cancer and femininity was reinforced in the nineteenth century by the emergence of ‘sex’ as a category of scientific analysis: women’s liability to cancer of the uterus and breast served to confirm that their bodies were different because their reproductive functions made them so. Moscucci examines medical explanations of gender differentials in cancer mortality against the backdrop of changing ideas about cancer’s origins. In the late 1800s official statistics began to show that the disease was rising at a much faster rate in men than in women, fanning fears that the incidence of cancer was increasing. Yet anxieties about rising trends of cancer mortality in men did not substantially challenge the view that cancer was a ‘female’ disease.

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    Ornella Moscucci

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Moscucci, O. (2016). Cancer: A ‘Female’ Disease. In: Gender and Cancer in England, 1860-1948. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-60109-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-60109-7_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-230-55423-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-60109-7

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