Medical Officers of Health, Gender and Government Responses to the Problem of Cancer in Britain, 1900–1940

International efforts to maintain and improve the physical and mental condition of mothers, workers and warriors have often figured in national campaigns to raise human efficiency. Such concerns formed an important setting for the renewed interest in cancer at the beginning of the twentieth century, as a “medical, social, economical and political issue”. These features of national cancer debates during the twentieth century have attracted notice in important recent research on the subject. Scholars have noted the tendency of contemporaries to deploy metaphor to depict both the disease and attempts at cure. Contemporary rhetoric frequently portrayed the battle against cancer as a national crusade of embattled peoples, winning international recognition for their heroic efforts to confront a terrible scourge. Historians have similarly inclined towards vivid images in depicting the progress of medical approaches to cancer. For Patrice Pinell “the organized fight against cancer” relied on the convergence of both the medical profession’s various interests in the disease and the emergence of groups, separate from the scientific societies, keen to combat cancer on a number of fronts. In the British case, royal patronage for cancer charities has also been historically important. While there are parallels with professional and popular responses to other public health problems, Pinell has argued that internationally the evolution of cancer policy drew its distinctive features from the specific character of the disease itself. The present article addresses and extends this significant research. Broadly agreeing with Pinell’s conclusions, we revise and also problematize the narrative of cancer treatment and service administration which he provides. In particular, it is argued here that a