On 8/19/2015 5:35 AM, SeaNymph wrote:

I've always been dumbfounded by the concept of radical mastectomy.
You mean it never occurred to anyone to try lumpectomy? Yet, once
mastectomy was the "acknowledged treatment", it was really hard to
move folks away from that to more "rational" treatments -- no one
wanted to go first!

Well I believe that lumpectomies are almost always the first step. BTDT

*Now* they are. It was a significant change in treatment to adopt
that in lieu of mastectomy.