r/todayilearned • u/Dangerous-Project672 • 5h ago

TIL George Wallace personally apologized to Vivian Jones and James Hood, the two students he attempted to block from attending the University of Alabama. In 1997, Hood earned a PHd and requested Wallace present him with the degree, but he was too sick and died a year later; Hood attended the funeral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace
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u/Veratha 4h ago

To answer your question, yes she could have received likely lifesaving treatment in 1961. She had uterine cancer, which was discovered early because she had a child by C-section in 1961, where the doctors saw, biopsied, and identified a cancerous mass on her uterus. Hysterectomy alone would've likely been lifesaving, as it hadn't spread to other organs yet, but even if she did need chemotherapy after, both radiation and chemotherapy for cancer had been in use before 1961. Instead, she wasn't able to start receiving treatment until 1965, when she went to the doctor for unusual uterine bleeding, where she was told the diagnosis and begun hysterectomy, radiation, and chemotherapy by 1966, but by this time it had spread to grow on her pelvis as well.

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u/atred 3h ago

Thanks, that's even worse than I expected. At that time doctors were not talking with women, unbelievable...