The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Book cover; shows a crab in the center of the page, with the title above and the subtitle and author beneath
Cover of The Emperor of All Maladies
Author Siddhartha Mukherjee
Country United States
Language English
Subject Cancer
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Scribner
Publication date
 16 November 2010
Pages 592
ISBN 978-1-4391-0795-9

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is a book written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist. It was published on 16 November 2010 by Scribner.

Reception

The Emperor of All Maladies won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction: the jury called it "an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal". The Guardian wrote that "Mukherjee manages to convey not only a forensically precise picture of what he sees, but a shiver too, of what he feels." Literary Review commended Mukherjee's narrative: "It is so well written, and the science is so clearly explained, that it reads almost like a detective story—which, of course, it is."

Title

The book explains its title in its author's note:

In a sense, this is a military history—one in which the adversary is formless, timeless, and pervasive. Here, too, there are victories and losses, campaigns upon campaigns, heroes and hubris, survival and resilience—and inevitably, the wounded, the condemned, the forgotten, the dead. In the end, cancer truly emerges, as a nineteenth-century surgeon once wrote in a book's frontispiece, as "the emperor of all maladies, the king of terrors."

Content

The book weaves together Mukherjee's experiences as a hematology/oncology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital as well as the history of cancer treatment and research. Mukherjee gives the history of cancer from its first identification 4,600 years ago by the Egyptian physician Imhotep. The Greeks had no understanding of cells, but they were familiar with hydraulics. Hippocrates thus considered illness to be an imbalance of four cardinal fluids: blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm. Galen applied this idea to cancer, believing it to be an imbalance of black bile. In 440 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus recorded the first breast tumor excision of Atossa, the queen of Persia and the daughter of Cyrus, by a Greek slave named Democedes. The procedure was believed to have been successful temporarily. Galen's theory was later challenged by the work of Andreas Vaselius and Matthew Baille, whose dissections of human bodies failed to reveal black bile.

In the 19th century, surgeons devised various approaches to remove tumors, like William Halsted and the radical mastectomy. Additionally, Emil Grubbe used X-rays to treat cancer, thus identifying another treatment modality. Rudolph Virchow first observed leukemia, and Franz Ernst Christian Neumann localized the pathology to the bone marrow.

In the 20th century, cancer became the second most common cause of death after heart disease in the United States. Sidney Farber induced temporary remission in pediatric leukemia using antifolates developed by Yellapragada Subbarow. Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman also used nitrogen mustard to treat lymphoma. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) introduced clinical trials to test the efficacy of chemotherapy. Recognizing the possibility for a cure, Farber sought funding for his efforts through The Jimmy Fund and Mary Lasker. Inspired by the Space Race, Farber and Lasker appealed to the nation and President Nixon to enact legislation for the War on Cancer, resulting in the passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971 and increased funding for the NCI.

The book also reviews the origins of hospice and palliative medicine and cancer screening.

According to Mukherjee, the book was a response to the demand of a patient: "I'm willing to go on fighting, but I need to know what it is that I'm battling." Mukherjee states that two of his influences for the book were Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On and Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but the defining moment for him was "when he conceived of his book as a biography".

It was described, by the magazine TIME, as one of the 100 most influential books of the last 100 years, and by The New York Times Magazine as among the 100 best works of non-fiction.

Awards and honours

Translations

  • 2011: Italian: L' imperatore del male. Una biografia del cancro, Neri Pozza ( ISBN 978-88-545-0331-1).
  • 2011: Korean: 암 : 만병의 황제의 역사, 이한음 ( ISBN 978-89-7291-506-5).
  • 2012: Turkish: Tüm Hastalıkların Şahı, Zeynep Arık Tozar ( ISBN 978-6056260483).
  • 2012: German: Der König aller Krankheiten, Barbara Schaden ( ISBN 978-3832196448).
  • 2012: Lithuanian: Visų ligų karalius: vėžio biografija, leidykla "Versus aureus" ( ISBN 978-9955-34-352-3).
  • 2012: Portuguese: O Imperador de Todos os Males. Uma biografia do cancro, Bertrand Editora ( ISBN 9789722523943)
  • 2012: Spanish: El emperador de todos los males: Una biografía del cáncer, Editorial Taurus ( ISBN 6071112362)
  • 2013: French: L'empereur de toutes les maladies. Une biographie du cancer, Éditions Flammarion ( ISBN 978-2081285446).
  • 2013: Dutch: De keizer aller ziektes, een biografie van kanker, de Bezige Bij ( ISBN 978-9023472896).
  • 2013: Russian: Царь всех болезней. Биография рака, АСТ, ISBN 978-5-17-077569-9.
  • 2013: Ukrainian: Імператор усіх хвороб: біографія раку, Київ, видавництво Жупанського ( ISBN 978-966-2355-36-9).
  • 2013: Polish: Cesarz wszech chorób: Biografia raka, Wydawnictwo Czarne ( ISBN 978-83-7536-544-3)
  • 2013: Bulgarian: Императорът на всички болести: Биография на рака, Изток - Запад ( ISBN 978-619-152-315-3)
  • 2013: Hungarian: Betegségek betegsége: mindent a rákról, Libri ( ISBN 978-963-310-087-5)
  • 2013: Arabic: إمبراطور الأمراض: سيرة ذاتية للسرطان, Tariq Olayan ( ISBN 978-603-8086-27-8)
  • 2013: Norwegian: Keiseren over alle sykdommer- kreftens biografi, Press ( ISBN 9788275475105).
  • 2013: Japanese: 病の皇帝「がん」に挑む ― 人類4000年の苦闘, Hayakawa Publishing ( ISBN 4152093951)
  • 2014: Swedish: Lidandets konung: Historien om cancer, Albert Bonniers Förlag ( ISBN 9789100132699).
  • 2014: Thai: จักรพรรดิแห่งโรคร้าย ชีวประวัติโรคมะเร็ง : The Emperor of All Maladies : A Biography of Cancer, สุนันทา วรรณสินธ์ เบล แปล, สำนักพิมพ์มติชน ( ISBN 978-974-02-1085-6).
  • 2015: Persian: "سرطان امپراطور بیماری‌ها", The House of Biology ( ISBN 978-600-6926-36-0).
  • 2015: Icelandic: Meistari allra meina: Ævisaga krabbameins, Forlagið ( ISBN 978-9979-53-617-8).
  • 2015: Czech: Vládkyně všech nemocí, Masarykova univerzita ( ISBN 978-80-210-7761-4).
  • 2017: Persian: «پادشاه همۀ امراض», Salekan ( ISBN 978-964-5537-02-7).

See also