The prostate cancer is a common but terrifying disease affecting a great part of the male population, especially those with the age over forty.



Humans are not immune to diseases, so it is very important to understand the “enemy” to find a cure. If you can not prevent then you must fight the sickness which is affecting the good functioning of your body.

The prostate cancer is a horrible disease not only because of its frequency but also because there are no early symptoms to indicate its existence in the human body and unfortunately when symptoms do appear the prostate cancer is in an advanced form.

These things were not known until very recently when medical research studies gathered enough information about the prostate cancer to offer some potential treatments for it.

Several decades ago, when the prostate cancer was discovered people did not know about this disease, they only remarked the common symptoms.

Ever wondered who discovered this type of cancer?

Well the first attempt in describing the prostate and the prostate disease symptoms was made by Niccolo Massa, a Venetian anatomist, in the late 1530’s; some illustrations of it dating back from 1538 and made by Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist, are still available.

Despite all of this, the prostate cancer was not officially identified until 1853, in the last years of the ninetieth century still being considered a rare disease probably because of the short life expectancies and poor medical information.

The beginning of the twentieth century was that period of time when medical experiments were conducted regularly and all sorts of new treatments were made available, including for the prostate cancer. As a result in 1890’s, with little success, the first surgical operation was attempted by removing the testes, a procedure known as orchiectomy. In 1904, at John Hopkins Hospital, Hugh H. Young performed for the first time a procedure called radical perineal prostatectomy described as a surgical removal of the gland.

This extreme method was replaced by the transurethral resection of the prostate and in 1941 the “chemical castration” was discovered by Charles B. Huggins, after conducting several research studies using estrogen to oppose the production of testosterone.

The prostate cancers were classified as adenocarcinomas, developing in the glandular tissue and neuro-endocrine cancer, which spreads earlier but doesn’t produce the prostate specific antigen also known as PSA.

The brachytherapy procedure was invented back in 1901, when Pierre Curie and Henri-Alexandre Danlos decided to experiment a little by inserting the radioactive source into the tumor. The result was the obvious shrinking of the tumor. In parallel, in New York, at St. Luke’s and Memorial Hospital, Robert Abbe tried to develop new application techniques for brachytherapy, but for the treatment of the prostate cancer it was used much later in time, only since 1983.

Chemotherapy was also considered as an option for treating the prostate cancer in the 1970’s.

Since its discovery several centuries ago attempts of curing this horrible disease are still being made, some with little success, but some with encouraging results. The important fact is that life is precious and you have to preserve it no matter the cost.