Stress And Cancer

The great physicians of the past believed that emotions and disease were interrelated. Galen, the Greek physician who lived from A.D. 129 to ca. 199, suggested that melancholy women suffered more from cancer than sanguine women.

Dr. Walter Walshe, writing in The Nature and Treatment of Cancer emphasized that mental disquietude was a basis for cancer and that those who had a family history of this disease should avoid the stressful professions of the bar, medicine, and diplomacy. He stated that the suggestion that health follows from but the claim between stress and cancer has been shown to be correct.

Psychologist Elida Evans collected information on one hundred cancer patients and found that many of them had lost an important emotional relationship shortly before the onset of their illness. They seemed to have become so involved with one person, vocation, or cause that they neglected the development of their own individuality. When that person or relationship was removed, they felt cut off and found few internal resources for coping with the attendant stress. The literature indicates that the presence of cancer could be a sign of despair, and that this is often accompanied by feelings that there is no solution to one’s problems.