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Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2020 The diagnosis "cancer" used to be a death sentence. Today, this is no longer the case. It took a long time for doctors, nurses, cancer patients and their relatives to come to terms with the feelings that cancer causes: Confidence, fear of life, joy of life, despair, courage, grief, suffering, apathy. Bettina Hitzer describes how this emotional revolution in medicine and society came about. Confronted with cancer, we perceive our human body differently today. We feel illness, disability, suffering and death quite differently today, because we are able to express our feelings. Today, in hospitals, in rehabilitation centers and in public campaigns for early detection, as well as in one-on-one conversations, people empathize more and communicate this to patients. Bettina Hitzer describes historical connections between illness and feeling that have received little attention. In an empathetic, exemplary and encouraging way, she describes this cultural history of feelings, which has remained unnoticed until today, using the example of cancer, the "king of all diseases". This revolution of feelings has fundamentally changed medicine and astonishingly transformed German society. The human being is at the center of humane medicine, which is supported by technology, machines and programs without dominating our health care system. Feelings help to survive and to arrive in one's own life. Cancer in particular shows that we cannot give life more days, but we can give our days more life - above all through what we feel.