A technique for alleviating pain may help disable nerves that spread cancer
Reading articles like this reminds me how little we know. Before we had a theory of germs (viruses and bacteria), we believed that sickness came from phlogiston. This did a decent job of explaining how disease spread, but didn&#x27;t do a very good job of how explaining how it originated. If you were sick, you were enveloped in a cloud of invisible nastiness, and staying away was a good way to remain healthy. Certain things, like carcasses and stinky puddles, were thought to be carriers of phlogiston.<p>The thing that I find most interesting about the theory of phlogiston is how close it is. It&#x27;s almost right, but humanity needed a fundamental shift in the way we thought about disease to actually start to solve the problems of disease. I feel like cancer is the modern form of phlogiston. It&#x27;s close, but cancer is slippery enough that it&#x27;s got to be wrong; I want to be clear, though, that the theory may still be useful.<p>Now, perhaps breaking down cancer into it&#x27;s distinct forms (breast cancer, skin cancer, etc.) will get us there - this approach may have led us to the discovery af germs as different types of phlogiston. But I can&#x27;t help but think that our mental model for cancer is wrong.