Surgical treatment of breast cancer has a history of more than 2000 years since the 1st century AD. I thought that to understand a disease one must first understand the history of human understanding, diagnosis and treatment, which is the only way to be far-sighted, whether it is necessary for researchers, medical recoverers or patients. In general, the surgical treatment of breast cancer has gone through five stages: primary local excision, radical surgery, extended radical surgery, modified radical surgery and breast-conserving and axillary-preserving surgery. In particular, breast-conserving surgery is likely to become the mainstream surgery in the future, considering both therapeutic effect and aesthetics. I. Primitive local excision In 460-377 BC, Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician, described breast cancer, which opened the history of human understanding of breast cancer. And the surgical treatment of breast cancer began in the 1st century A.D. Dr. Leonides, a Greek physician, first noticed the nipple depression in breast cancer patients and first performed mastectomy, and some scholars also did total mastectomy. In those days, surgery was performed without anesthesia and hemostasis was only done by fire branding, which was very primitive. In the 10th-16th centuries, it was recognized that breast cancer could not be cured by removing the tumor or the breast alone, and Cabrol first began extensive local excision, including the pectoral muscle and some of the surrounding normal tissues; later, many doctors found that the axillary lymph nodes were enlarged in breast cancer patients, and Severinue first performed removal of the enlarged axillary lymph nodes along with the breast cancer. However, before the 19th century, breast cancer was considered to be a localized lesion and treatment was only focused on localization. Without good anesthesia, hemostatic and anti-infective drugs, surgery was brutal and the mortality rate was extremely high, with a short-term recurrence rate of over 90%. Doctors also began to suspect that breast cancer was not a confined disease, but due to the limitations of medical conditions at that time, there was no breakthrough in treatment means. In the 19th century, with the development of anatomy and the application of microscope in pathology, basic medicine had a great development and the law of lymphatic metastasis of breast cancer was gradually recognized. 1822 Elliott first discovered the infiltration of tumor cells in axillary lymph nodes with microscope. 1846 Morton in the United States used ether for general anesthesia, and the development of anesthesiology thereafter made In 1852, Joseph Pancoast was the first surgeon who proposed whole breast and axillary lymph node excision, and first used combined breast and axillary incision to perform whole breast.