Rodent cancer

In the 19th Century, the cancer now called basal cell carcinoma was known as rodent cancer. That's because patients with advanced cases, like this woman treated in London in the mid-1800s, looked as if their flesh had been gnawed away by rats.

This photograph was published in 1867 in one of the first medical textbooks, "Rodent Cancer." It was written by Dr. Charles Hewitt Moore (1821-1870).

Credit: Dr. Stanley B. Burns