At the turn of the century gynecology had achieved independence from
surgery in most medical schools; although gynecologists were surgeons,
their interests were turning toward nonsurgical aspects of their
specialty. In 1900, merely two years after the Curies' discovery, radium
was first used as a treatment for carcinoma of the cervix. In that day
cervical cancer claimed more women's lives than any other malignancy and
was described by Wil- liam P. Graves, the second professor of gynecology
at Harvard as follows: 'Cancer of the cervix may rightly be termed of
all tumors one of the most deadly and most ghastly. It kills by slow
torture, causing in later stages months of agonizing pain and producing
a discharge of such a foul and nauseating character as to repel proper
medical assistance. Nurses declined to care for these cases, while many
public hospitals closed their wards to them as patients. ' In late
twentieth century parlance the dramatic results of radium therapy would
indeed have been called a 'breakthrough'? and radium techniques, later
combined with external irradiation, were devel- oped by gynecologists,
no longer just surgeons. Pathology was the basic science of gynecology
and gynecologists with a special interest in pathology served as
pathologist to the departments of gynecology. As late as 1970 six months
of the three-year residency program in obstetrics and gynecology at
Harvard were devoted to formal training in pathology.