1. Before Survivorship: The Moment of Recovery in Twentieth-century American Cancer Campaigns.
- Author
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Cantor, David
- Subjects
CANCER patient rehabilitation ,BREAST cancer patients ,ONCOLOGY nursing ,ASSOCIATIONS, institutions, etc. ,MASTECTOMY ,CANCER ,HISTORY - Abstract
This paper concerns what I call “the moment of recovery,” the time when, in the 1950s, American cancer campaigns abandoned an earlier tendency to downplay post-operative recovery in their public education programs. This change was signalled by the emergence of new patients groups such as Reach to Recovery (founded 1953), and by a new interest in cancer rehabilitation among physicians, nurses, and manufacturers and sellers of equipment and clothing for patients. My focus is on breast cancer and the nurse-patient-industrial complex that drove the new interest in rehabilitation and recovery, but I also argue that the “moment of recovery” in breast cancer was part of a larger “moment” in cancer more generally. Finally, I seek to distinguish the “moment of recovery” of the 1950s from the discourses around the survivor that have emerged since the 1970s and 1980s, what might be called the “moment of survivorship.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2014
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