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I'm devoting a section of my undergraduate lecture on the history of cancer to caustic treatments, but sadly I can't include everything I'd like to so here's a mini thread about corrosive acids and their use as remedies for malignant tumours in nineteenth-century Britain 
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Caustic treatments were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and involved the application of a corrosive pastes to the surface of cancerous tumours. These pastes were made from anything from arsenic to chloride of zinc 2/12
In contact with the skin or malignant mass, these substances would burn through flesh and could be reapplied until the tumour had been completely eaten away. 3/12
Unsurprisingly, the application of acid to broken flesh caused intense suffering. One woman being treated for breast cancer in the 1850s described her caustic remedy as "dreadfully painful, as if it were pulling her heart out" 
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Much like surgery, practitioners knew that these efforts would only temporary alleviate suffering and that they were unlikely to completely cure patients of malignant disease. They knew that cancer could spread around the body, metastasise, and reappear elsewhere. 5/12
We might think that such agonising treatments were the preserve of quacks and charlatans. But no, caustic remedies were used by elite doctors. And, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that patients actively sought out these treatments and even chose acids over the knife. 6/12
Surgery had a bad reputation in the nineteenth century - plenty of people died on the table or shortly afterwards from infection or shock. Caustic treatments also provided another benefit...7/12
When left to their own devices, cancerous tumours often ruptured - seeping noxious fluid from open wounds. By burning through foetid flesh, caustics sealed off the offensive sore. 8/12
One woman's tumour was so foetid that, "the odour of her whole house, was so overpowering that the comfort of the inmates was destroyed; servants could not be kept; and even nurses could only be induced to stay by high wages and an almost unlimited allowance of brandy." 9/12
The very first application of the acidic paste removed and "completely destroyed" all "offensive odour". For patients, a cure was not the only thing they sought. Reasserting the body's boundaries and removing foetid flesh were also important to the cancer sufferer 10/12
Caustic treatments for cancer should make us re-think our initial assumptions about supposedly 'barbaric' treatments in the past. These remedies were frequently the best that doctors could offer and served a range of purposes for the patients who chose them. 11/12
To find out more about caustic treatments for cancer, see chapter three of my book and my #OpenAccess article on gender and pain in nineteenth-century cancer care: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0424.12468 12/12
