Cervical precancer and cancer, past, present and future

This review is a short summary of the very long history of invasive and in situ carcinomas of the cervix. The items considered in this paper are the etiology of cervical cancer by a sexually transmitted agent proposed about 150 years ago by Domenico Rigoni Stern, the birth of radical surgery for the treatment of cervical invasive carcinoma with the Wertheim operation in 1898, radium therapy and chemotherapy, cytological diagnosis, the birth of colposcopy, microcolposcopy, the definition of carcinoma in situ, dysplasia and microcarcinoma, the birth of the International Federation for Cervical Pathology and Colposcopy, condylomatosis lesions of the cervix and some HPVs as agents of cervical pre-cancer and cancer, and finally the concept of vaccination against oncogenic HPV types. All these constitute an integral part of common medical practice.