Cancer is as old as mankind. It was found in an Egyptian mummy some 5,000 years old. Unfortunately, even now, people are unaware about its nature, its cause, its prevention and, most importantly, there are several misconceptions that make the problem even more complicated. The human body has the inherent capacity of repairing a dead or damaged tissue by multiplication of cells and there is a control system for this. When there is lack of control, the cells multiply excessively and form a lump. This is called a tumour. This can be benign — where the lump grows slowly, does not damage the neighbouring structure and does not spread to other organs. These tumours are usually not fatal. The other type of tumour is malignant (cancer), where the lump grows very rapidly, involves the neighbouring and distant organs and can be fatal if not treated early. To medically define, cancer is uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells, which ultimately leads to ulcer and tumour formation. This grows at the expense of the host and ultimately kills the patient if not treated in proper time. It spreads locally through local infiltration, spreads through lymphatics to regional lymphnodes and any part of the body through blood stream. Hopefully, medical science has improved enormously over the years to challenge this fatal disease that was regarded ‘untreatable’ once.