Cyrus’ daughter Atossa has captivated me for all sorts of reasons, not least: she may be the first woman to have had a mastectomy and survived. Whether she did or didn’t is a matter of some debate.
Only a brief note by Herodotus informs us of her condition and treatment. The author of Bathsheba’s Breast, James Stuart Olson, thinks that Atossa feared but didn’t finally have breast cancer. Rembrandt’s mistress on the other hand… Olson tells that the painter used his mistress, Hendrickje Stoffels, as a model for Bathsheba and painted her with what a modern physician observed appears to be a cancerous breast. Indeed, Stoffels is said to have died after a long illness. We have come a long way since the times of the biblical Bathsheba (ca. 1000 BC), Atossa (ca. 500 BC), and Stoffel’s 17th century Holland. New treatments have lent remarkable levels of survival. But cancer in all its forms continues to be the most dread disease. Even in the face of diminishing resources, the brightest and most innovative minds continue to seek better treatments, even cures, for what Hippocrates (Dr. “Do No Harm”) named for the grasping-clawed crab. “Atossa’s War,” as Mukherjee calls it in his Pulitzer Prize winning Biography of Cancer isn’t over yet.
