You might be interested in past posts on this topic:

• Did sailors back in the day (say mid-1700's) have issues with things like skin cancer from excessive sun exposure?
  ^(11 Jul 2014 | 80 comments)
  ^(/u/Aethereus describes how skin cancer was understood by 17^th and 18^th century physicians.)

• How big of a deal was cancer in places like Ancient Rome or Greece? What was treatment like if there was any?
  ^(27 Oct 2014 | 2 comments)
  ^(/u/caustic_banana describes how the Ancient Greeks and Romans understood some forms of cancer.)

You can ask followup questions by posting your questions in the comments with experts tagged to direct questions to them.