she had met as a teenager, Robert Benchley: His Life and Good Times (1970). In the 1970s, Rosmond became an important early activist against traditional treatments for breast cancer. In February 1971 she found an olive-sized lump in her breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer. The traditional treatment was a radical mastectomy, which required removal of the entire breast as well as surrounding tissue, muscle, and lymph nodes. Two of her friends had that procedure and reported being unhappy with their choice and the resulting side effects. In response to her refusal to undergo a radical mastectomy, her doctor was condescending and insulting and told her she would be dead within three weeks. Through an article in McCall's by Dr. William A. Nolen she learned about Dr. George Crile, Jr. at the Cleveland Clinic. Crile was a leading advocate in the United States for procedures that removed much less material, a simple mastectomy, which only removes the breast, and a lumpectomy, which removes only a small amount of tissue. Then extremely controversial, these treatments are now standard instead of using a radical mastectomy in all cases. Crile performed a successful lumpectomy on Rosmond and her cancer did not reappear until the late 1990s. She said "I think what I did was the highest level of women's liberation. I said 'No' to a group of doctors who told me, 'You must sign this paper, you don't have to know what it's all about. Under the name Rosamond Campion, she began writing about her experiences. Her article in the February 1972 issue of McCall's, "The Right to Choose", generated more mail than any article in that publication's history. Some 80 percent of the mail was in support of her decision and many of the letters were from women who asked how to contact Dr. Crile, whose name she had withheld at his request. She told her story in a book, The Invisible Worm (1972), which takes its title from the poem "The Sick Rose" by William Blake. She appeared on a number of television programs, including a 1973 episode of The David Susskind Show where she and Crile debated two surgeons and two breast cancer survivors all opposed to her position. Public activism like Rosamond's caused a drastic transformation in how patients and doctors interacted regarding breast cancer and prompted a growing rejection of more radical procedures in favor of more