This book examines the history of the Victorian Cancer Registry (VCR) in Australia from its
establishment in the late 1930s through to the present day. It sheds new light on the history
of medicine and the broader social and cultural histories affected by advances in cancer
control science providing a historical account of cancer registration that is empirically
grounded in new archival and oral sources. It addresses the obstacles that proponents of cancer
registration faced how governments came to support permanent registries and the subsequent
contributions of the VCR and other registries to cancer research. In charting this history the
book discusses some of the political social and cultural implications of registry-driven
science and the links between developments in scientific knowledge and campaigning for policy
changes around cancer.
