I feel silly for not realizing that earlier.

It can be traced back even further then this, ww1 the use of mustard gas.

Chemotherapy originally meant treatment of disease-- any kind of disease-- with chemicals, i.e. drugs. It was a commonplace thing, but most people were unfamiliar with the word. At first, surgery was the only known effective treatment for cancer, and later, radiation. Chemotherapy for cancer came last. When people first heard about it, it was, for most of them, the first time they heard the word chemotherapy, so it became associated in the public mind with cancer.

Geoblocked site sadly

Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for this.

Mustard gas is therapeutic?

Yes

That's what this whole post is about

Manchurian gold? Dark pictures anthology anyone?

My first thought as well

Good book is the emperor of all maladies. It's kind of crazy how in the early days they just sort of threw everything at cancer to see what stuck.

You make my head hurt. The answer is literally a click away, and you choose to be ignorant.

Not exactly therapeutic: it’s toxic, but as a WW2 military surgeon found out, it turns out to be even more toxic for cancer cells than for regular cells…

AFAIK the term “chemotherapy” wasn’t used before cancer chemotherapy, and it was adopted as an analogous construction to “radiotherapy”. Just as in cancer radiotherapy the radiation is targeted to destroy the cancerous cells, in cancer chemotherapy those cells are “chemically targeted” for destruction. The insight that cancerous cells could be more vulnerable than non-cancerous cells to some chemicals was gained in the aftermath of the Bari disaster, by the military surgeon reporting the effects of mustard gas on the sailors.

Thing is, the insights on mustard gas in WW1 didn’t go much beyond: “Geez, this shit is nasty”, whereas in the aftermath of this WW2 one-off, one military surgeon noted that mustard gas appeared to interfere with the cell-splitting process, and his boss then realised that this could be made useful against cancer…

https://aacrjournals.org/cancerres/article/68/21/8643/541799/A-History-of-Cancer-Chemotherapy#12307971

Nope, they’re correct.

I found these items unrelated to cancer:

“Progress in Chemotherapy and the Treatment of Syphilis,” journal title, 1924.

“Chemotherapy of a New Group of Arsenical Compounds…,” master’s thesis, 1924.

“Experimental Chemotherapy in Malaria,” article, 1941.

“Ineffective Penicillin Chemotherapy of Arthritic Rats….,” article, 1943.

The first chemotherapy drugs, some of which are still in use, are alkylating agents, and they're basically chemically similar and derived from mustard gas (which isn't a gas, incidentally).

Not really. The link wasn't made until World War II, though nitrogen and sulfur mustard were first used as weapons during the First World War.

Well yea kind of because it was what happened in WW1 that lead to this discovery.

They was studying a potential antidote just in case it was used in WW2.

First use of it being used medicinally was August 1942

With the actual component being found in 1948.

No matter how little of a connection you think it is the use of mustard gas in WW1 is what led them to the studies.

I guess in the sense that there was some notice of the impact on bone marrow during World War I but it wasn't until the work of Gilman et al during the Second World War that there was progress.

Yea that is correct, the reason why I framed it like such is based on how OP has worded title if they put that chemos first use was ww2 then yea but do you get what I mean haha.