Mukherjee describes cancer as the disease of the atomic age. He writes that each age has a disease that captures its zeitgeist, or prevailing ethic. In Victorian times, the weakening and wasting of tuberculosis seemed to capture the times. As that disease faded, cancer became the emblematic disease of the era.

Cancer became the disease of the atomic age in part because other perils disappeared with better sanitation. In addition, people began to live longer, and cancers are more common in older ages. Finally, the 20th century, marked by violence and corruption, was one in which societal perils and ills seemed to arise from within. Cancer spoke to the fears of a world that had seen these perils.

The horror of cancer increased in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the fears of a communist and nuclear attacks abated. Instead, society’s enemy seemed to be within. There appeared to be a corruption and rot within the body of society “and, by extension, within the body of man” (182). Cancer was symbolic of this decay from within. Fear of “the Big C” (182) became the prevailing era of the age.

Cancer also typified the sense that danger could arrive unannounced.