Question: Why is cancer called cancer?

Sarah Thomas answered on 24 Mar 2011:

There are loads of medical books explaining the etymology of “cancer”. “Cancer” or the Greek word “Canker” means “crab” in Latin, a sea creature which has no connection to the disease beyond the imagination. Although no one is certain who coined this term, most sources point on Claudius Galen of Pergamum, a Greek Physician worked in Rome in 2nd Century AD. He thought that the swollen veins surrounding a tumour resembled a crab’s limbs. Anyway, the term comes from the descriptive pathology of a usual malignant tumour, which spreads its claws in all directions, much like a crab, and has a tenacious tendency to hold on to the parent tissue even when surgically removed a part of a structure or an organ, again like the creature.