What Happens in Chemotherapy

Malin Dollinger, MD, and Ernest H. Rosenbaum, MD 
Adapted for the Canadian edition by Richard Hasselback, MD 

The idea of treating cancer with chemical agents
or medications has been around since the days of
the ancient Greeks. Yet the practice of cancer
chemotherapy as it's known today really
only began in the 1940s. Near the end of
that decade, nitrogen mustard became
the first drug approved to fight
tumor cells . Over the next 20 years,
chemotherapy was essentially an
investigational treatment.
    But in the last 30 years, more
effective antitumor drugs have 
been developed, and other new