The First Mastectomy

Breast Cancer on Mammogram
1890
AD

William Stewart Halsted, who was the first Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Yale, performed the first radical mastectomy (removal of the entire breast, the muscles in the front of the chest, and the lymphatic system of the breast) to treat breast cancer.1 2

  • 1Morton, Leslie T., and Moore, Robert J. A Chronology of Medicine and Related Sciences. Aldershot, England: Scholar Press, 1997
  • 2Udwadia, Farokh Erach. Man and Medicine: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.