Among my collection of old medical books, one published in 1927 simply entitled Bone Sarcoma, (based on 700 cases) by Anatole Kolodny, has a good introduction which includes a page of history.

Please keep in mind that everything written then may not necessarily be a medical fact right now.

Kolodny wrote:

The word "sarcoma" belongs to those time-honored terms which are enjoying free general usage in medicine despite the fact that they do not at the present express the original ideas suggest by the sponsors of the term. The name sarcoma has been used to designate a tumor with a firm and fleshy feel. The conception of sarcoma a century ago was very wide including all tumors that could not be grouped with other tumors belonging to the few separated entities known at that time. Curiously enough with such a wide conception of sarcoma, the tumors known today as bone sarcomata were not included in this group.

Referring to that century ago, of course he meant 1827, and interesting to me was that bone tumors were not considered to be sarcoma. He mentions Rudolf Virchow, (Founder of Pathology) as not having discriminated sharply enough between sarcoma of bone and cancer.

You might be interested in reading a clarifying article published by the Journal of Bone and Joint Disease which Kododny wrote in 1925, Diagnosis and Prognosis of Bone Sarcoma