[Arab surgery and cancer: definitions and treatments]

The present paper presents the study of a set of cancers collected by medieval doctors, especially Arabic surgeons, in order to identify their knowledge about carcinoma, how they defined the disease and, most importantly, what type of treatment they applied. The paper is organised in three sections: in section 1, we focus on the terminology used to refer to carcinoma. In section 2, we offer a description of the symptoms specific to each type of cancer. Finally, in section 3, we describe the surgical and pharmacological treatments, followed by diet-related remedies. We analysed texts by al-Zahrāwī, Ibn Sīnā, Ibn al-Quff and al-Safra.