During the second-half of the Spanish nineteenth century, a variety of articles and advertisements detailing treatments that cured cancer proliferated in both the medical and the general press. Cancer therapeutics included powders and ointments made of arsenic, mercury, sulphur or other chemicals, the application of ice, the use of galvanic currents, decoctions of roots and plants, cauterizations, bathing in a spa, restraining a depressing passion of the anima and, last but not least, a tumour removal surgery. The news praising the suitability of one or another of these treatments for obtaining the definitive recovery of patients were, nevertheless, as common as those news related to the frequency of relapses, the complete uselessness of a given prescription, and even warnings against its use because it would only increase cancer malignancy. Cancer was a badly known disease, and medical practitioners proceeded -rather unsuccessfully- by trial and error in their efforts for curing their patients. What is more, innovations in therapeutics tended to lie on evidence of the efficacy of a remedy for curing patients suffering from other diseases, particularly those that were capturing a greater social and institutional attention at that time; i.e.: tuberculosis, syphilis or hysteria. Within the surgeons’ community, however, there was a particularly solid and prolonged convincement in that removal surgery was the only possible way of curing cancer. The huge proportion of relapses did not invalidate the adequacy of the scalpel. It only showed technological limitations that could progressively be overcome with the advances in chemical anaesthesia, antiseptics and, from the turn of the twentieth century, the dissemination of prevention advice. Drawing mainly on volumes of clinical records, surgery treatises, and both medical and general press of the second-half of the Spanish nineteenth century, my presentation will focus on exploring the available knowledge and expectations of cancer sufferers in relation to the therapeutics of this dreaded disease, with a particular emphasis in patients’ hopes and fears about removal surgery.