[Melancholia and cancer: changes in the psychosomatic interpretation of cancer from the medico-historical viewpoint].

Specialized literature and belles lettres have been dealing increasingly with psychographs and biographies of cancer victims for whom a psychopathological condition is assumed to have paved the way for illness. In support of this assumption, authors cite what is supposed to be an unbroken chain of reports on the relationship between melancholy and cancer since antiquity. The fact that the views of ancient medicine have little in common with current understanding of such key concepts as melancholy and hypochondria is revealed by comparing the explanations of these terms from different periods. "Melancholy", when defined as a risk factor in the development of cancer, comprehends the following: a psychosomatic syndrome, a particular personality type, mental suffering as a result of stress and strain, disturbances of personality of a depressive nature with echoes of a thymo-alexic syndrome. The evaluation of historical documented arguments in support of a theory of psychosomatic oncogenesis is designed to call attention to the danger of false interpretations on the one hand and to the need for critical examination of present-day utterances on the subject on the other.