Endocrine Aspects of Breast Cancer

Abstract

A relationship between the endocrine system and breast cancer was first demonstrated by Beatson in 1896, when he obtained some benefit from oophorectomy in two patients with advanced disease. Until that time the treatment of breast cancer was limited to removal of the mamma and excision of superficial metastatic or recurrent nodules. The practice of castrating cows to maintain lactation after calving suggested to Beatson that the ovaries must be concerned in some way with the regulation of the physiological processes of the breast.

Reporting his findings to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, Beatson summed up:

“The conclusion I draw from two cases I have brought under notice is this — that we must look in the female to the ovaries as the seat of the exciting cause of carcinoma, certainly of the mamma . . . .”