In the eighteenth century there was an awakening of medical thought: a new physiology based on an understanding of the circulation of the blood, and a new surgery founded on accurate knowledge of human anatomy. With the rise of medical schools and the use of cadavers to teach human anatomy, observation and experience replaced traditional theories of cancer. Pott had read widely in ancient and medieval medical texts, but in his practice he chose to rely solely on personal experience and first-hand knowledge, and thus was able to discern a cause for cancer in the environment and to develop a cure with wide surgical excision.
Workers often have more intense and prolonged exposure to environmental chemicals and conditions than the general population. Therefore many environmental diseases are first noted in the workplace. The first recorded instance of an occupational disease may be the description of lead colic in metalworkers, attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-375 B.C.). The Swiss physician and chemist Paracelsus (1493-1541), who studied the health of miners, was responsible for the first book on the diseases of a specific occupational group. Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714), an Italian physician, authored the first systematic treatise on occupational diseases in 1700, in which he describes disorders associated with 54 different occupations.
