Abstract

George Herman “Babe” Ruth is remembered today as the greatest baseball player ever. Fans recall fondly his prodigious home runs and his many titles, records, and accolades earned on the playing field. In 1946 Ruth developed various symptoms in the head and neck region. He subsequently sought medical treatment and received a multitude of misdiagnoses.

Ruth had a relatively rare form of cancer known as nasopharyngeal carcinoma. To the present day, many misconceptions still persist surrounding his cancer. Today, we can truly view Ruth as a hero off the athletic fields for his humanitarian efforts in volunteering for experimental cancer treatments in order to help medical researchers gather very valuable information while fully knowing that such treatments would never cure his own cancer.