Aspects of childhood cancer during the Byzantine period.

The main trends in the diagnosis and management of childhood cancer during the Byzantine period (330-1453 CE) are investigated. Therapeutic modalities reflected the influences from Ancient Greek and Greco-Roman medicine. Medical treatment included a great variety of regimens, and surgery was not unknown. The attitudes toward cancer suggest that people of that time did not believe in a superstitious origin of the disease. Even though most of these remedies and many procedures are nowadays out of use, the physicians of the Byzantine period preserved the scientific medical thought of antiquity, improved it, and set the basis of current achievements. Medical terms introduced during the Byzantine period are still used. The texts have been studied in their original languages, that is, Ancient and Byzantine Greek, and Latin.