Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. This week we had an episode on the
Speaker 1: history of mimography, which did not have many women in
Speaker 1: it considering its subject matter. So today we have our
Speaker 1: past episode on doctor Vera Peters, who really revolutionized the
Speaker 1: care of two different cancers, one of them being breast cancer.
Speaker 1: Although the medical community's response to her research at the
Speaker 1: time was pretty skeptical. She started publishing on this work
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, so right in the middle of
Speaker 1: some of what we talked about on this mimography episode,
Speaker 1: and near the end of this episode we mentioned a
Speaker 1: paper that cited her male co author as doctor but
Speaker 1: cited her as miss and not being sure whether the
Speaker 1: paper was published before or after she finished medical school.
Speaker 1: And we just wanted to note that women with medical
Speaker 1: degrees or doctorate's being called miss while their male colleagues
Speaker 1: are called doctor. It is not a relic of the
Speaker 1: past that still happens today. Yeah, when I listened to
Speaker 1: the episode, I was like, kind of make it sound
Speaker 1: like this is no longer a problem, But I sure
Speaker 1: do know many women who are either doctors or have
Speaker 1: doctoral degrees who are deeply frustrated by it, especially on
Speaker 1: things like panels and paper titles and et cetera. This
Speaker 1: episode originally came out March eighteenth, twenty fifteen, So enjoy
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fryme. So we've mentioned quite a
Speaker 1: number of times that we have an extensively long list
Speaker 1: of to dos on the podcast. There are hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of listeners submitted suggestions, and then we
Speaker 1: have our own to do lists, and they are both
Speaker 1: very long and sometimes sort of like when you're you
Speaker 1: have access to hundreds of channels on the television, it
Speaker 1: just feels like nothing's on. I scroll through all those things,
Speaker 1: and there are so many great ideas on there, but
Speaker 1: none of them are quite catching my attention that day.
Speaker 1: And you and I both know from experience that the
Speaker 1: best episodes come from when we're really engaged with what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Yeah, if you're just not in the
Speaker 1: mood for a topic, even if it's an awesome topic,
Speaker 1: it just won't turn out as well as if you
Speaker 1: wait a little while and let it become the thing
Speaker 1: that catches your mood. Right, and some of the things
Speaker 1: I was in the mood to talk about were on
Speaker 1: hold until uh stuff could come in from the library.
Speaker 1: So I was browsing around the Internet and found a
Speaker 1: post on Rejected Princesses about doctor Vera Peters, who was
Speaker 1: one of the foremost oncologists in the world in her time.
Speaker 1: Not only was she one of the only female oncologists
Speaker 1: in the world, she completely changed the standard of care
Speaker 1: for two different types of cancer. And she was one
Speaker 1: of rejected Princesses modern worthies, and those are usually about
Speaker 1: a woman who died within the last fifty years. The
Speaker 1: Rejected Princesses Modern Worthies posts tend to be pretty brief,
Speaker 1: so this one hits the highlights. Doctor Peters helped revolutionize
Speaker 1: the treatment of both breast cancer and Hodgkins lymphoma, but
Speaker 1: at the time that she did, her work was largely
Speaker 1: ignored and dismissed. So naturally, immediately I wanted to know
Speaker 1: a lot more about this person and what she did. Therefore,
Speaker 1: we're going to have a whole episode on her today. Hooray,
Speaker 1: We'll do the usual setup on early life. Mildred Vera
Speaker 1: Peters was born in Rexdale, Ontario, on April twenty eighth
Speaker 1: of nineteen eleven. She was one of seven children, and
Speaker 1: her parents were dairy farmers. Her mother was also a teacher.
Speaker 1: Vera and her siblings worked on the farm, starting at
Speaker 1: a very early age, particularly after the sudden death of
Speaker 1: their father. Her first education was in a one room schoolhouse.
Speaker 1: She finished high school at sixteen, and she wanted She
Speaker 1: knew already that she wanted to become a doctor. She
Speaker 1: was too young to start medical school, though, so she
Speaker 1: enrolled in the University of Toronto to study math and physics,
Speaker 1: and then she trammedurred to the medical program the following year.
Speaker 1: She worked summer jobs to save up her money, and
Speaker 1: her brother and her sisters helped pay her way as well.
Speaker 1: While she was working as a waitress on a tourist ship,
Speaker 1: she met Ken Lobb, who was the man she would
Speaker 1: later marry and they would eventually have two daughters together.
Speaker 1: While she was still in medical school, her mother was
Speaker 1: treated for breast cancer, and after a recurrence, she was
Speaker 1: treated by doctor Gordon Richards, who at that point was
Speaker 1: one of the most respected doctors in the field of
Speaker 1: radiation oncology, which at that point was pretty early in
Speaker 1: its development. Doctor Richards was also one of the doctors
Speaker 1: that Vera studied under, and Vera's mother unfortunately did die
Speaker 1: of her cancer, which was one of the things that
Speaker 1: led Vera to want to study the disease later in
Speaker 1: her life. Doctor Peters graduated from medical school in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four and went on to a residency in radiology
Speaker 1: at Toronto General Hospital. At this point in medicine, there
Speaker 1: was no official training protocol or certification for radiotherapy, so
Speaker 1: doctor Peters apprenticed with doctor Richards and she started working
Speaker 1: at the Ontario Institute of Radiotherapy in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: and she continued to work with doctor Richards right up
Speaker 1: until his death in January of nineteen forty nine. Before
Speaker 1: we get into more of the specifics of her medical work,
Speaker 1: here's a caveat Doctor Peters did really groundbreaking work and
Speaker 1: the treatment of two different cancers, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about them enough to give a sense of why
Speaker 1: her work was so important. But this is absolutely not
Speaker 1: meant to be a thorough exploration of either cancer even
Speaker 1: or even of the human body systems that they involved.
Speaker 1: This is also definitely not a thorough examination of how
Speaker 1: these cancers are treated today because the whole field of
Speaker 1: oncology has evolved tremendously since doctor Peters retired in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. So this is much more about how the
Speaker 1: developments that doctor Peters launch changed the way medicine was
Speaker 1: working at the time than about the diseases specifically or
Speaker 1: how they're treated today. So doctor Peter's first groundbreaking work
Speaker 1: was in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease, which was before
Speaker 1: that point considered to be incurable. Now more commonly known
Speaker 1: as Hodgkins lymphoma, this is a cancer that affects the
Speaker 1: lymphatic system, its name for doctor Thomas Hodgkin, who described
Speaker 1: it in eighteen thirty two. The major difference between Hodgkins
Speaker 1: lymphoma and the more common non Hodgkins lymphoma is that
Speaker 1: Hodgkins lymphoma involves large abnormal cells called reed Sternberg cells,
Speaker 1: while these cells are not present in non Hodgkins lymphoma.
Speaker 1: Between its first description in eighteen thirty two and nineteen
Speaker 1: o two, no doctors reported any successful treatment of Hodgkins
Speaker 1: lymphoma at all. The first somewhat successful treatment was which
Speaker 1: was described in nineteen oh two, was the use of
Speaker 1: X rays on the involved lymph nodes, and while this
Speaker 1: did shrink the affected nodes somewhat, it did cure the disease,
Speaker 1: it maybe bought people a little time. There were a
Speaker 1: few advances between nineteen oh two and nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: when doctor Rene Gilbert of Geneva, Switzerland described treating the
Speaker 1: affected lymph nodes with radiation. He treated both the affected
Speaker 1: lymph nodes and other parts of the body that were
Speaker 1: not apparently affected, and while some of his patients did improve,
Speaker 1: many relapsed, and he didn't think of any of them
Speaker 1: as having been cured. Doctor Peter's mentor, doctor Richards, who
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, installed a four hundred killo radiation machine
Speaker 1: at the Ontario Radiotherapy Institute in nineteen thirty seven, just
Speaker 1: a couple of years before Jilbert's description of his method.
Speaker 1: This was a higher voltage machine than what doctor Jilbert
Speaker 1: was using, and doctor Richard used this machine to treat
Speaker 1: his patients for a variety of cancers. Doctor Richard's method
Speaker 1: with Hodgkin's lymphoma was to use extended field radiation on
Speaker 1: the affected lymph nodes and adjacent nodes. Although some accounts
Speaker 1: described this irradiation of nearby nodes as prophylactic. It wasn't
Speaker 1: really to prevent disease, it was to kill cancerous cells
Speaker 1: that had already spread to adjacent nodes but weren't yet detectable.
Speaker 1: At first, doctor Peters primarily worked under doctor Richard's supervision.
Speaker 1: She was kind of apprenticing to him, but as she
Speaker 1: became more experienced as a doctor, she began to treat
Speaker 1: patients on her own as well. In nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: after ten years of treating lymphoma patients with the four
Speaker 1: hundred kilovolt machine, doctor Richards made an observation to doctor Peters.
Speaker 1: It seemed to him that some of their patients were
Speaker 1: surviving a long time with no relapse, even though Hodgkins
Speaker 1: lymphoma was supposedly incurable, and he asked her how she
Speaker 1: wanted to evaluate their work on the matter. So there
Speaker 1: are some people who interpret this as meaning that doctor
Speaker 1: Richards should get credit for what happened next. After all,
Speaker 1: especially at the beginning, he was the one who was
Speaker 1: successfully treating the patients for their cancer. What he really
Speaker 1: did was give doctor Peters a question to answer, and
Speaker 1: the work she did to answer that question eventually changed
Speaker 1: the perception of Hodgkins lymphoma from being an incurable disease
Speaker 1: to a curable one. Doctor Peter spent two years studying
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirteen patients who had been conclusively diagnosed
Speaker 1: with Hodgkins lymphoma and treated with radiation at the hospital
Speaker 1: where she worked. She largely did this by hand at
Speaker 1: her dining room table. She was ready to present her
Speaker 1: findings to her colleagues in nineteen forty nine, which was,
Speaker 1: unfortunately after doctor Richards had already died. Her findings revealed, though,
Speaker 1: that his theory was right. Their patients were living longer
Speaker 1: than lymphoma patients at other hospitals. Their five year survival
Speaker 1: rate had doubled and their ten year survival rate had tripled.
Speaker 1: Patients in Stage one, which was the least advanced stage,
Speaker 1: lived a median of eleven point six years, and she
Speaker 1: didn't describe any of the patients as cured, but their
Speaker 1: prognosis was really a lit better and her tone was
Speaker 1: a lot more optimistic than any of the medical wisdom
Speaker 1: on Hodgkins lymphoma at the time. The idea of approaching
Speaker 1: Hodgkins lymphoma with the goal of curing it was revolutionary,
Speaker 1: and even though doctor Peters had clear, compelling data to
Speaker 1: back up what she was saying, it took about ten
Speaker 1: years for the medical establishment to start taking this concept seriously.
Speaker 1: Doctor Peters presented a follow up paper in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: six that included two hundred and ninety one Hodgkins lymphoma cases,
Speaker 1: with all of the data just as solidly pointing to
Speaker 1: the idea that Hodgkins disease could be cured, especially in
Speaker 1: the early stages. But perceptions in the medical field didn't
Speaker 1: really start to change until Eric C. Eesen and Mary
Speaker 1: and H. Russell, using doctor Peter's data, confirmed her work
Speaker 1: in their paper Cure of Hodgkins Disease that was in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. It took even longer than that for
Speaker 1: the idea that Hodgkin's disease could be approached as something
Speaker 1: that can be cured in a medical textbook. Treatments have
Speaker 1: continued to advance today, especially if it's in the early stages.
Speaker 1: Hodgkin's disease is considered to be one of the most
Speaker 1: curable adult cancers. Having made these kinds of strides in
Speaker 1: Hodgkin's disease, doctor Peters turned her focus to breast cancer,
Speaker 1: which was personally important to her because of her mother,
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that work after a brief ad break.
Speaker 1: So to get back to doctor Peters's work with breast cancer.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty eight, the Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess
Speaker 1: Margaret Hospital opened and patients and staff from Toronto General,
Speaker 1: including doctor Peters and her patients, were transferred there. As
Speaker 1: a side note, we're about to talk about breast cancer
Speaker 1: for a while, and while men can and do get
Speaker 1: breast cancer, we're really going to be talking about women
Speaker 1: here because that's the work that doctor Peters was doing.
Speaker 1: All of her focus was on breast cancer treatment in women,
Speaker 1: not in men, so we're not excluding men for some
Speaker 1: other reason. That's just the work that she was focused on.
Speaker 1: So at this point, the overwhelming majority of patients who
Speaker 1: were diagnosed with breast cancer were treated with a radical mastectomy,
Speaker 1: also called the Halsted procedure for the doctor who popularized it.
Speaker 1: Almost as soon as they were diagnosed, they would go
Speaker 1: in for a biopsy, which was done under general anesthesia,
Speaker 1: and if the lump was cancerous, they'd have the mestectomy
Speaker 1: before they were gained consciousness. This made the possibility of
Speaker 1: breast cancer particularly terrifying women got onto an operating table
Speaker 1: not knowing if they had cancer or not, and not
Speaker 1: knowing if they would wake up without a breast or not.
Speaker 1: The mestectomy itself, which was the standard treatment regardless of
Speaker 1: whether the cancer had spread beyond one tumor, was a
Speaker 1: lot more involved than mestectamies typically are today. A radical
Speaker 1: mastectomy removes more than just the breast. That also moves
Speaker 1: the pectoral muscles under the breast, along with the lymph
Speaker 1: nodes under the arm on the same side as the
Speaker 1: affected breast. This idea was that the cancer was less
Speaker 1: likely to spread if you literally removed all of the
Speaker 1: things adjacent to it where it was most likely to spread.
Speaker 1: And you know, while these are the places that cancer
Speaker 1: is most likely to go after appearing in the breast,
Speaker 1: this court was the course of action, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: cancer had been detected in any of these other places.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, a radical mastectomy permanently and significantly altered
Speaker 1: the body. Even after the reconstruction, a woman's chest itself
Speaker 1: would look a lot different. It would basically be concave
Speaker 1: because of the loss of the pectoral muscle, wall over
Speaker 1: and over again. Modern medical papers describe radical mass deectomies
Speaker 1: of the past as and this is quote disfiguring. Such
Speaker 1: a huge change to such a personal part of the
Speaker 1: body was psychologically and emotionally damaging or many patients for
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. Could also be physically disabling
Speaker 1: since it removed some of the muscles used to control
Speaker 1: a person's arm, and the loss of lymph nodes can
Speaker 1: lead to permanent swelling and an increased likelihood of infections
Speaker 1: in the arm. Nerve damage was also a really frequent complication,
Speaker 1: and this is why today radical mastectomy is extremely rare
Speaker 1: and it's only performed when there really is cancer in
Speaker 1: those adjacent tissues. When people have messt deectomies today, they're
Speaker 1: usually what's considered a simple mastectomy, which removes the breast
Speaker 1: but leaves at least some of the lymph nodes, or
Speaker 1: a modified radical mastectomy, which removes the breast and lymph
Speaker 1: nodes but only gets into the pectoral muscles if the
Speaker 1: cancer has actually spread there. Even though a radical mastectomy
Speaker 1: was a standard of care for breast cancer patients at
Speaker 1: this point, there were a few people who didn't have
Speaker 1: them because of other medical conditions, or, in a very
Speaker 1: limited number of cases, the patients who just put their
Speaker 1: foot down and refused to have more aggressive surgery. These
Speaker 1: patients had surgeries that conserved more of their breast. It
Speaker 1: was either a simple mastectomy or a lumpectomy. Unless there
Speaker 1: was some medical reason why a woman could not have
Speaker 1: a radical mastectomy, these options were pretty much always against
Speaker 1: medical advice. Doctor Peter's previous work with lymphoma meant she
Speaker 1: was particularly insightful when it came to how cancer spread
Speaker 1: through the lymphatic system. Patients were often referred to her
Speaker 1: for follow up radiation treatment after their surgery, and she
Speaker 1: also had personal experience with how traumatic breast cancer treatment
Speaker 1: could be after she had lost her mother to the
Speaker 1: disease in nineteen thirty three, so she wanted to see
Speaker 1: if less drastic treatments could prove to be as effective
Speaker 1: as a mastectomy while still preserving as much of the
Speaker 1: breast as possible. She published her first work on the
Speaker 1: subject in nineteen sixty seven, and it was based on
Speaker 1: comparing the survival rates for women who had been treated
Speaker 1: for their cancer with different forms of treatment. She studied
Speaker 1: the record of seven thousand patients who had been treated
Speaker 1: between nineteen thirty five and nineteen sixty eight. Hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty two of these patients had had their lump removed
Speaker 1: during their biopsy. One hundred and twenty four of those
Speaker 1: had radiation as their only follow up treatment, while the
Speaker 1: others had some combination of a mastectomy and radiation. What
Speaker 1: she found was that there was absolutely no difference in
Speaker 1: the survival time between the women who had just had
Speaker 1: a lumbectomy and the women who had had a mastectomy
Speaker 1: when it came to women with stage one and stage
Speaker 1: two breast cancer. In her opinion, the more conservative surgery
Speaker 1: which preserved the woman's breast was just as viable a
Speaker 1: medical option as a mastectomy. And this was a completely
Speaker 1: controversial stance at the time. In her words, quote, I
Speaker 1: was refuted and shunned by most of the outstanding surgeons
Speaker 1: in the States, except for doctor George Cryle of Cleveland.
Speaker 1: She was determined, though, and so she decided to do
Speaker 1: a case a case control study of the records from
Speaker 1: Princess Margaret Hospital. So while she had previously calmed through
Speaker 1: all of the records and looked at them as a whole,
Speaker 1: this time she controlled for the age of the patients,
Speaker 1: their other health factors, whether they also had other cancers.
Speaker 1: She narrowed it down to only patients with stage one
Speaker 1: breast cancer, and then she meticulously matched up the ones
Speaker 1: who had a lumpectomy in radiation with the ones who
Speaker 1: had a mastectomy and radiation, and to match them up,
Speaker 1: she looked at their ages, how large the tumor was,
Speaker 1: and the year that the treatment took place. This gave
Speaker 1: her one hundred and forty five pairs in which the
Speaker 1: lumpectomy group had no statistically significant difference than the mastectomy group.
Speaker 1: In fact, the lumpectomy group had slightly better survival than
Speaker 1: the mastectomy group. In other words, for women with stage
Speaker 1: one cancer, a more conservative treatment that preserved their breast
Speaker 1: did not harm their chances of survival. Radical mastectomy was
Speaker 1: not necessary when the disease had not started to spread.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy five, she presented these findings at the
Speaker 1: Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Speaker 1: Their response was really skeptical at best. Two years later,
Speaker 1: doctor Peters published an updated version of the paper in
Speaker 1: an international journal, which gave it more exposure and also
Speaker 1: came to the exact same conclusions in that paper. She
Speaker 1: was really direct in her opinion. She said, quote as
Speaker 1: more and more conservative studies ripen, as more and more
Speaker 1: concerned physicians observe the adverse effects of excessive treatment, as
Speaker 1: more and more women become armed with knowledge, mastectomy and
Speaker 1: early breast cancer may become as old fashioned as blood letting.
Speaker 1: Doctor Peters retired from the hospital the year before that
Speaker 1: revised paper was published, although she maintained a part time
Speaker 1: practice and she continued to teach. But gradually oncologists did
Speaker 1: start taking a more conservative approach to early stage breast cancers. Today,
Speaker 1: women with early stage breast cancer generally have a mested
Speaker 1: to me if there's some medical reason to do so.
Speaker 1: Doctor Peter's impact on the medical field also went beyond
Speaker 1: just the specific treatment of these two cancers. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk about how after a brief ad break, so to
Speaker 1: return to doctor Peters, a lot of people take the
Speaker 1: idea of patient centered care to for granted today, even
Speaker 1: if they've never heard that term specifically, I know that
Speaker 1: lots of people have lots of different access to medical care,
Speaker 1: depending on all kinds of factors, including their income level,
Speaker 1: and their age, and their race and lots lots of
Speaker 1: different issues. But for the most part, when people go
Speaker 1: to the doctor, they kind of expect their doctor to
Speaker 1: treat them like a human being and to listen to
Speaker 1: them and to explain what's going on. And this was
Speaker 1: not really how things worked. When doctor Peters started practicing medicine,
Speaker 1: she was really a forerunner in the idea listening to
Speaker 1: a patient's wishes and explaining to them and helping them
Speaker 1: make decisions about their own treatment. This whole idea was
Speaker 1: really far from standard when she was practicing medicine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she actually got to know her patients and she helped
Speaker 1: them make decisions about their own health care rather than
Speaker 1: just seeing them as a condition to treat and telling
Speaker 1: them what to do. Another common attitude today is that
Speaker 1: when you go to the doctor, you should get a
Speaker 1: treatment that's going to be the right amount to solve
Speaker 1: the problem, not something that's just going to be so
Speaker 1: completely aggressive that it's going to blast the problem away
Speaker 1: but then also leave you with potentially lots of scars
Speaker 1: or huge side effects or you know, lots of adverse
Speaker 1: effects to taking care of the problem. This was also
Speaker 1: core to doctor Peter's philosophy. As a doctor, she wanted
Speaker 1: to do the most conservative treatment to get the job done,
Speaker 1: and it was really different from a lot of what
Speaker 1: was going on at the time. Obviously, doctors were putting
Speaker 1: women to sleep to do a biopsy and then taking
Speaker 1: their entire breast in the case of really small tumors
Speaker 1: that hadn't progressed anywhere. She really wanted to avoid the
Speaker 1: risks that came of side effects and other complications by
Speaker 1: doing a more minimal treatment but still trade into actual problem.
Speaker 1: And she was also a role model for young women
Speaker 1: who were interested in becoming doctors, not just because of
Speaker 1: her success as a doctor, but also because she proved
Speaker 1: that a woman could be a doctor while also being
Speaker 1: a wife and mother, and that was something that really
Speaker 1: needed proving at this point in history. She did a
Speaker 1: lot of her research at home, so she was compiling
Speaker 1: her work by hand. She wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 1: make the breakthroughs that she did otherwise, But outside of
Speaker 1: the medical world she was missus Lobb, mother of two.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the other female forerunners in
Speaker 1: the world of medicine we've talked about have been women
Speaker 1: who eschewed the more traditional, stereotypical feminine side, and so
Speaker 1: it actually was a big deal that, in addition to
Speaker 1: being a doctor, she got married and had children. All
Speaker 1: of this work was additionally incredible because at this point
Speaker 1: there were hardly any women doctors at all, let alone
Speaker 1: women doctors who were on the cutting edge of their
Speaker 1: field revolutionizing the treatment of multiple diseases. And Doctor Vera
Speaker 1: Peters became an Officer of the Order of Canada in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. She was awarded the Gold Medal from
Speaker 1: the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and the Woman of Distinction Award from the Canadian Breast
Speaker 1: Cancer Foundation in nineteen eighty eight. Sadly, she died of
Speaker 1: cancer on October first, nineteen ninety three, at the age
Speaker 1: of eighty two. She died at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto,
Speaker 1: where she had worked for most of her career, and
Speaker 1: she was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: in twenty ten. It's kind of a side note there
Speaker 1: was a play about her called Radical, which was written
Speaker 1: by Charles Hayter, who was also an oncologist, that actually
Speaker 1: premiered to just sell out standing room only crowd at
Speaker 1: the Toronto French Festival in July two. Thank you, doctor
Speaker 1: Vera Peters. I know you and I both have family
Speaker 1: experience with breast cancer and the fact that somebody said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have got to just stop treating women as a
Speaker 1: thing to put on a table and remove part of
Speaker 1: their body without actually talking to them about it, like
Speaker 1: that's a big deal. Yeah. The idea of not being
Speaker 1: asked questions about treatment is so alien to me that
Speaker 1: it's shocking. Yeah. Yeah, uh and you. I said this
Speaker 1: to you off Mike, and now I'm just gonna say
Speaker 1: it on Mike. As I was researching this, I found
Speaker 1: a citation of that cure for Hodgkins disease paper. It
Speaker 1: was like a citation of the paper that was in another, uh,
Speaker 1: another journal, and it cited the male doctor is doctor
Speaker 1: and the female author of the paper is missed. And
Speaker 1: I could not figure out whether she was actually a
Speaker 1: doctor when that notation was published or not, because it
Speaker 1: is possible that she was credited on a paper but
Speaker 1: was not yet a medical doctor. But I sincerely wonder,
Speaker 1: based on all of the other things that were going
Speaker 1: on at the time, whether she was just credited as
Speaker 1: miss instead of doctor because she was a woman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a mystery that remains to be solved. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
Speaker 1: episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
Speaker 1: email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over
Speaker 1: the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us all over social media at missed
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