John Foster Dulles, his medical history and its impact on Cold War politics.

John Foster Dulles was the United States Secretary of State during the administration of President Dwight D Eisenhower. At the height of the Cold War, Dulles was Eisenhower's emissary, traveling over 450,000 international miles, leading United States foreign policy. In November of 1956, during an international crisis involving the Suez Canal, Dulles became ill and underwent an operation for a perforated colon cancer. During much of his impactful term as Secretary of State, Dulles was being treated for this cancer that ultimately resulted in his death in May of 1959. This paper highlights the medical care of John Foster Dulles and the global events during his illness.

The loss in expectation of life after colon cancer: a population-based study.

BACKGROUND: To demonstrate how assessment of life expectancy and loss in expectation of life can be used to address a wide range of research questions of public health interest pertaining to the prognosis of cancer patients. METHODS: We identified 135,092 cases of colon adenocarcinoma diagnosed during 1961-2011 from the population-based Swedish Cancer Register. Flexible parametric survival models for relative survival were used to estimate the life expectancy and the loss in expectation of life. RESULTS: The loss in expectation of life for males aged 55 at diagnosis was 13.5 years (95 % CI 13.2-13.8) in 1965 and 12.8 (12.4-13.3) in 2005. For males aged 85 the corresponding figures were 3.21 (3.15-3.28) and 2.10 (2.04-2.17). The pattern was similar for females, but slightly greater loss in expectation of life. The loss in expectation of life is reduced given survival up to a certain time point post diagnosis. Among patients diagnosed in 2011, 945 life years could potentially be saved if the colon cancer survival among males could be brought to the same level as for females. CONCLUSION: Assessment of loss in expectation of life facilitates the understanding of the impact of cancer, both on individual and population level. Clear improvements in survival among colon cancer patients have led to a gain in life expectancy, partly due to a general increase in survival from all causes.

Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar)'s description of verrucous malignancy of the colon (with an English translation from Arabic and notes on its Hebrew and Latin versions).

Ibn Zuhr (ca. 1091-1161) is the most important physician of Muslim Spain. His Kitâb al-Taysîr, translated into Hebrew and Latin, is principally a manual of therapeutics containing descriptions of clinical cases. His description "On Verrucae (tha'âlîl) that Occur in the Stomach [sic]," which deals with an emaciated Berber who evacuates a tumour the size of an apple in his stools, represents the first detailed report of a cancer of the colon. Latin and Hebrew translations of this report are close to the Arabic, but it is doubtful that the Latin text is based on the Hebrew. The possibility of an intermediate Judeo-Arabic text should be considered.