Bernard Peyrilhe

Bernard Peyrilhe (1735–1804) was a French surgeon and medical writer whose experimental cancer research and arguments for surgical treatment anticipated later developments in oncology.

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Cancer: A group of diseases in which abnormal cells grow and may invade or spread to other parts of the body. Peyrilhe investigated cancer when its causes and nature remained poorly understood.
Tumor transplantation: The transfer of tumor tissue or cells into another site or organism to study tumor growth. Peyrilhe tested whether implanted cancerous material would produce a tumor in an animal.
Académie royale de chirurgie: A French royal institution founded in 1731 to advance surgical practice and education. Peyrilhe's career developed within the French surgical culture the institution helped formalize.
Radical mastectomy: An operation that removes the breast, underlying chest muscles, and regional lymph nodes to treat breast cancer. It exemplifies the extensive surgical approach that later developed from treating cancer by removal.
Cancer surgery: The removal of cancerous tissue by an operation, sometimes combined with treatment of nearby structures. He argued that removing a tumor could offer a means of treating cancer.
Cancer etiology: The study of the causes and origins of cancer. His experiment was motivated by questions about how cancer arose and spread.
Jean-Louis Petit: A French surgeon known for contributions to surgical technique and the treatment of disease. Petit represents the influential French surgical tradition contemporary with Peyrilhe.
Surgical oncology: The medical specialty concerned with using surgery to diagnose, stage, and treat cancer. Peyrilhe's advocacy of tumor removal anticipates this later specialty.
Cancer research: Scientific investigation of cancer's causes, biology, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. His animal experiment is an early example of systematic cancer investigation.
Animal model: A nonhuman animal used to study biological processes or diseases relevant to humans. The animal served as the experimental subject in Peyrilhe's cancer investigation.