1872

Cancer and various tumor cases “became an integral part of the first significant disagreement between the women and the medical staff” of Woman’s Hospital in NYC: “they [the Lady Supervisors] saw breast cancer as separate and not fitting under the rubric of female disorders that originally defined the hospital. . . . The smell was terrible, the women argued, and damaging to the well-being of the other patients” (McGregor, 190). “Many people identified ‘miasma,’ or qualities of the atmosphere, as the source of a disease – hence the preoccupation with proper ventilation, the fetor [foul smell] of cancer, and the fear of sickness gone this far” (189).