The History of Cancer and Emotions in Twentieth-Century Germany.

EMOTIONS; TWENTIETH century; QUALITY of life; PUBLIC health officers; NAZI Germany, 1933-1945; PHYSICIAN-patient relations

Hitzer argues that 'the history of "being diagnosed with cancer" should not be told as a straightforward story of liberation from the conventions of paternalistic dishonesty' (p. 154) and includes an illuminating discussion of Emperor Friedrich III whose death from laryngeal cancer in 1888 occasioned the first extensive coverage of cancer by the German media. While the book covers the history of cancer in both men and women, each chapter begins with a biographical or autobiographical portrait of a woman's experience with the disease. Bettina Hitzer, Heisenberg Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the Technische Universität Dresden and I Privatdozentin i at the Freie Universität Berlin, has written what may fairly be called a definitive history of cancer in twentieth-century Germany. [Extracted from the article]