A history of the disease’s treatment, from gory past techniques to promising advances, is on show at the Science Museum in London.LONDON — With so many lives affected by cancer — in the United States alone, about 40 percent will receive a cancer diagnosis during their lives — it might be understandable if the disease were a common and compelling subject for museum shows.Despite the statistics, major exhibitions on cancer have been few and far between. But on Wednesday, “Cancer Revolution: Science, Innovation and Hope” opened at the Science Museum in London. The show, running through January 2023, is one of the first big institutional efforts to tell the full story of the disease and its treatment.The exhibition includes objects linked to early surgeries — which were conducted without anaesthetic — as well as displays showing how artificial intelligence and virtual reality are now helping doctors detect and treat the disease.Katie Dabin, the Science Museum’s curator of medicine, said in a telephone interview that an exhibition on cancer could easily have ended up being “cold and clinical” — “It’s a hard sell for a family day out,” she acknowledged.To avoid that, she said, she tried to include objects to fuel interest in the topic and make visitors feel comfortable discussing their fears and hopes regarding the disease. Dabin knows those fears all too well — her mother received a diagnosis of breast cancer just as the exhibition was being put together. With her mother recovering — “Touch wood, she’s cured,” Dabin said — she has also experienced the growing hope that progress in medical science can provide.In an hourlong conversation, Dabin talked about some of the show’s exhibits, which feature curios such as a tumor found in a tree and machines involved in cutting-edge technology such as gene editing. Here are extracts of her commentary, edited for content and clarity.The shinbone of a Centrosaurus apertus dinosaur, which was found to contain a malignant tumor.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesA cross-section of a tree trunk showing chaotic cell growth. Plants can get cancer, though the disease spreads in a different way.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesA cancerous dinosaur bone, and a tree tumorThere’s this perception that cancer is a modern disease, and very uniquely human, and that leads to a lot of people blaming themselves when they’re diagnosed: ‘What have I done?’ But cancer affects all multicellular life. It’s a disease of cells and unfortunately when cells divide, on occasion, that process goes wrong.This is a shinbone from a Centrosaurus apertus: a horned, plant-eating dinosaur that lived about 76 million years ago in Alberta, Canada. Researchers at McMaster University and the Royal Ontario Museum put the bone through almost the same process as a human would be diagnosed with cancer today — even CT scans — to prove that dinosaurs were affected by cancer too.Plants can also get cancer, like the tree tumor known as a crown gall. Because plants have more rigid cell walls, the cancer cells don’t spread in the same way as with humans and animals.A cast of Robert Penman’s head. In 1828, before anaesthetic was widely used, a Scottish surgeon carried out a 24-minute operation to remove the tumor.Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times19th-century cast of Robert Penman’s jawDoctors have always been aware of cancer — its name derives from the ancient Greek word for crab — but in ancient times, they knew there wasn’t much they could do to help. The cancers would often come back. But things did improve with our understanding of anatomy and better medical techniques.This is a cast of Robert Penman’s face. He was 16 when he started noticing a growth on his jaw that kept growing. In 1828, when Penman was 24, a Scottish surgeon called James Syme carried out a remarkable operation to remove the tumor. This was years before anesthesia was widely used, and Penman must have been in excruciating pain, but he sat upright in a chair throughout the full 24-minute operation. He made a full recovery.Models of cancers, created using 3-D printers. Top, the tumor inside the abdomen of Leah Bennett, 6; and bottom, the sarcoma, colored yellow, in the forearm of a 19-year-old patient.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesPrinting tumors in 3-DThe cast of Penman’s jaw was probably made to document the case, but 3-D prints are today used to help plan complex surgeries, like one of a tumor that was in the abdomen of a 6-year-old girl called Leah Bennett. The tumor was wrapped around her spine and her major blood vessels, and several surgical teams thought it too risky to remove. But surgeons at Alder Hey Hospital near Liverpool worked with a 3-D scanning company to produce this model and plan the surgery. They removed about 90 percent of the tumor and Leah eventually went back to school.A cast that would fit over a patient’s hand to treat skin cancer using radium.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesGlove with a pouch for radium spikes, from the 1950sSurgery is still the main way of removing tumors, but after X-rays were discovered in 1895, radiotherapy soon became used too. After scientists realized that X-rays could damage healthy skin, doctors put two and two together and thought, ‘If they can damage healthy cells, they can damage cancer cells, too.’ The problem with X-rays was that they couldn’t penetrate deeply into the body, so radium was often used instead.Doctors sometimes use toys and other props, like this model of a LINAC machine, to help children understand their treatment better.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesTechnology of today: a model of a linear accelerator (LINAC) deviceThe most common form of radiotherapy today is the use of linear particle accelerators. Scientists developed them in the 1950s and they’re essentially a heavy-duty X-ray machine. This is a toy version that doctors give to children so they understand the process and find it less scary.A gas mask from 1917. Chemotherapy has its roots in World War I, when doctors observed that soldiers who had been affected by mustard gas had very low white blood cell counts.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesWorld War I gas maskThe other major form of cancer treatment is chemotherapy. This has surprising origins. In the First World War, mustard gas was used as a chemical weapon, and doctors observed that soldiers who had been affected had very low white blood cell counts. So they started experimenting and thought, ‘Well, if it’s killing white blood cells, maybe it can help in blood cancers, where white blood cells are rapidly dividing.’Two researchers in the United States, Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman, trialed the use of nitrogen mustard as a therapy for advanced lymphomas, and that opened up the field for research into other chemicals.The medications taken by Ann-Marie Wilson to manage the side effects of her treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesThe evolution of drugs to combat side effectsIn the ’50s and ’60s, the side effects of chemotherapy were so awful that the medical community found it very difficult to accept as a treatment. Today, there still can be many. These are all the medications that Ann-Marie Wilson, one of the patients who participated in our exhibition, takes every month to manage the side effects of her treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.New Developments in Cancer ResearchCard 1 of 6Progress in the field.

At 17, Dara McAnulty is becoming one of Britain’s most acclaimed nature writers, with work that touches on his autism as much as the world around his home.MONEYDARRAGH, Northern Ireland — While he carefully stepped from one moss-carpeted rock to another, Dara McAnulty outlined his rules for nature watching.