Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine
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Biography Historical Article
'Purgatory on earth': an account of breast cancer from nineteenth-century France.
The subject of this article is the terminal illness of Zelie Martin who died from breast cancer in 1877. She was a Catholic woman of Normandy, a professional lace-maker, and the mother of five daughters. ⋯ Her accounts of the disease are compared with medical texts of the period. Religious responses to illness, and the suppport offered by family members are also described.