Plural of cancer; diseases where cells in the body grow uncontrollably and spread, harming healthy tissue.
From Latin 'cancer' meaning 'crab,' named because the disease creates branching growths resembling crab legs. Ancient physicians like Hippocrates used this metaphor, and the term persists through modern medicine despite our advanced understanding.
When Hippocrates named cancer after crabs 2,400 years ago, he was using the only metaphor available—but that ancient metaphor stuck so well that we still use 'carcinoma' (from Latin 'cancer') even though we now know cancer spreads through cells, not like a pinching crab at all.
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