Actually, I have read accounts of people having surgery for stomach cancer in the late 19th century. Treatment options were more limited, but it wasn't necessarily a death sentence.
Paul, you're right that there was surgery available, or at least attempted, for many years before the era we speak of here. In fact, I just read a book about early surgery in the 19th century, and I was amazed and astonished at the things which were attempted then. More of it was successful than I would have guessed (and most of it - - gulp! - -
without anesthesia!) I still believe that cancer was considered, by those who received the diagnoses, a death sentence. I'm thinking of friends and relations who developed cancer even into the 1960s and '70s, and who were just plain grim about their prospects. But you're right that there was surgery available in the 1930s-40s.