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Time Capsule
Prof. Vera Peters teaching
at U of T in the 1960s
MEDICAL PIONEER
1960s
Dr. Vera Peters saved
lives with her treatments
for breast cancer and
Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Open U of T’s 1934 yearbook, and you’ll find photos of
115 graduating medical students – only 10 of whom are
women. Among them is (Mildred) Vera Peters, who went
on to revolutionize how Hodgkin’s lymphoma and breast
cancer are treated.
As a radiation oncologist at Toronto General Hospital,
Dr. Peters learned that many patients wouldn’t go to the
doctor if they suspected they had cancer. In the 1930s,
being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s was like being handed a
death sentence. By 1950, though, Peters and colleagues
had determined that high-dose radiation could cure this
lymphatic cancer if caught early. She began a lifetime
crusade to encourage patients to seek prompt treatment
and overcome what she coined “cancer phobia.”
Women who found a breast lump were also afraid to
seek medical attention: the standard treatment for breast
cancer was a radical mastectomy, in which the surgeon
removed the entire breast. But with early-stage breast
cancer, Peters excised only the tumour. In the mid-1970s,
Peters, who was a professor of radiotherapy and medical
biophysics at U of T, published a retrospective study of the
8,000 breast cancer patients she had treated. It showed
that treating the cancer in its early stage with a lumpectomy
and radiation produced the same survival rate as a
radical mastectomy.
“I was refuted and shunned by most of the outstanding
surgeons in the States,” Peters told the Oakville Medical
Society in the early 1980s. She remained steadfast and
as more studies found the same results, she optimistically
wrote, “Mastectomy in early breast cancer may become
as old-fashioned as bloodletting.”
– SUSAN PEDWELL
52 www.magazine.utoronto.ca
PHOTO: U OF T ARCHIVES B1996-0019/001(07)