The birth of cancer policies in France.

This paper analyses the social conditions of emergence of cancer politics in France in the inter-war period. It examines the historical circumstances whereby various segments of the dominant class - surgeons, "scientist" doctors, philanthropists - and "society ladies" concurred to create and "anti-cancer movement" and to found a new discipline, i.e., cancerology, as well as a novel form of organizing medical care, i.e., cancer-centres. It then examines the process of construction of a representation of cancer as a scourge disease, combining elements of medical, scientific and lay discourses.