FROM THE BATTLEFIELD INTO THE CANCER WARD

The first successful human reduction of tumors was observed with a 48 year old patient named J.D., who was diagnosed with lymphosarcoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. J.D., like most cancer patients at the time, likely had no other options for treatment and was hoping for either relief or a cure. J.D.’s tumors had become resistant to radiation treatment, and he was offered this experimental therapy.  

J.D. received the first therapeutic trial of intravenous mustard gas. He was injected with 10 consecutive doses of a tenth of a milligram of nitrogen mustard to a milligram per kilogram of body weight to provide a safe dosage.  

By the end of the treatment J.D.’s tumors had disappeared. They returned a month later, however, and had developed a resistance to nitrogen mustard. This initiated further trials containing 67 other lymphoma patients, combining mustard gas chemotherapy with radiation. Like J.D., these treatments were the only hope for the cancer patients. Some patients’ tumors became resistant to nitrogen mustard and radiation, like J.D., but all patients managed to live several months longer than otherwise expected. 

Currently, cancer can be a treatable illness. Early diagnosis, a combination of treatments, and preventative measures have significantly reduced the cancer death rate after the last century of treatment development. You can go into remission, live years of life without cancer reoccurring. And intravenous nitrogen mustard, also known as Mechlorethamine, is still used in chemotherapy today. 

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Sources:

(1965) Louis S. Goodman, M.D. Image from the History of Medicine. In National Library of Medicine. http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101416763​

Bach, C. (2021). Mechlorethamine (Mustargen®, Nitrogen Mustard). University of Pennsylvania, 2023. https://www.oncolink.org/cancer-treatment/oncolink-rx/mechlorethamine-mustargen-r-nitrogen-mustard 

Curtis, J. (2005). From the field of battle, an early strike at cancer. Yale Medicine Magazine, 2005(Summer), 18–19. https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/from-the-field-of-battle-an-early-strike/  

Kohn, K. W. (2022). Anti-Cancer Drugs that Crosslink DNA. In Drugs Against Cancer: Stories of Discovery and the Quest for a Cure (pp. 1–36). essay, National Cancer Institute. https://discover.nci.nih.gov/kohn/book/drugs_against_cancer_chapter1_v221022ej3.pdf  

Smith S. L. (2017). War! What is it good for? Mustard gas medicine. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne, 189(8), E321–E322. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.161032