Melanoma historical perspective

History of Melanoma
Although melanoma is not a new disease, evidence for its occurrence in antiquity is rather scarce. However, one example lies in a 1960s examination of nine Peruvian Inca mummies, radiocarbon dated to be approximately 2400 years old, which showed apparent signs of melanoma: melanotic masses in the skin and diffuse metastases to the bones.

John Hunter is reported to be the first to operate on metastatic melanoma in 1787. Although not knowing precisely what it was, he described it as a "cancerous fungous excrescence". The excised tumor was preserved in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It was not until 1968 that microscopic examination of the specimen revealed it to be an example of metastatic melanoma.

The French physician René Laennec was the first to describe melanoma as a disease entity. His report was initially presented during a lecture for the Faculté de Médecine de Paris in 1804 and then published as a bulletin in 1806. The first English language report of melanoma was presented by an English general practitioner from Stourbridge, William Norris in 1820. In his later work in 1857 he remarked that there is a familial predisposition for development of melanoma (Eight Cases of Melanosis with Pathological and Therapeutical Remarks on That Disease).

The first formal acknowledgement of advanced melanoma as untreatable came from Samuel Cooper in 1840. He stated that the '... only chance for benefit depends upon the early removal of the disease ...' More than one and a half centuries later this situation remains largely unchanged.

In 1956, Australian professor Henry Oliver Lancaster discovered that melanomas were directly associated with latitude (ie, intensity of sunlight); and that exposure to the sun was a very high factor in the development of the cancer.