Lung cancer

"Lung cancer, which was rare before 1900 with fewer than 400 cases described in the medical literature, is considered a disease of modern man. By the mid-twentieth century, lung cancer had become epidemic and firmly established as the leading cause of cancer-related death in North America and Europe, killing over three times as many men as prostate cancer and nearly twice as many women as breast cancer. Tobacco consumption is the primary cause of lung cancer, a reality firmly established in the mid-twentieth century and codified with the release of the U.S. Surgeon General’s 1964 report on the health effects of tobacco smoking."