A Cancer Treatment First

Theodore Billroth headshot
1878
AD

German surgeon Theodore Billroth performs the first pyloric resection (surgical removal of part or all of the stomach) to treat stomach cancer. Billroth was also the first (in 1872) to remove an esophagus as a cancer treatment.1 2

  • 1Morton, Leslie T., and Moore, Robert J. A Chronology of Medicine and Related Sciences. Aldershot, England: Scholar Press, 1997
  • 2Castiglioni, Arturo. A History of Medicine. New York: Alfred A. Knope, 1941.