History of Research on the Role of the Nervous System in Cancer

The first indications that the nervous system plays a role in cancer can be traced back to the second century AD, when Galen, in De Tumoribus, mentions a link between melancholic mood and an increased incidence of breast tumors in women. The same view of cancer as a consequence of melancholy prevailed for several centuries. Later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English and French surgeons and physicians began to attribute a causal role in cancer to adverse psychosocial and environmental factors (for a review, see Rosch (1996)). However, these descriptions were based on empirical evidence only and, in today’s terms, could be described as case studies.