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Cancer is often considered a disease of the modern age. However, medical texts from ancient Egypt show that healers of the time were aware of the condition. Now, new evidence from a skull more than 4,000 years old suggests that ancient Egyptian physicians could try to treat certain cancers with surgery.
The skull belonged to a man who was about 30 to 35 years old when he died, and it resides in the collection of the Duckworth Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Since the mid-19th century, scientists have studied the scarred surface of the skull, including multiple lesions thought to indicate bone damage from malignant tumors. Archaeologists view the skull, labeled 236 in the collection, as one of the oldest examples of malignancy in the ancient world, dating to between 2686 BC and 2345 BC.
But when researchers recently took a closer look at the tumor scars with a digital microscope and micro-computed tomography (CT) scans, they found cut marks around the tumors, suggesting that sharp metal tools had been used for the growths. removed. The scientists reported the results Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
“This was the first time that mankind was dealing surgically with what we call cancer today,” said senior study author Dr. Edgard Camarós, professor in the Department of History at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Coruña, Spain.
However, it is not known whether the healers tried to remove the tumors while the patient was still alive, or whether the tumors were removed after death, for analysis, Camarós told CNN.
“If those cut marks were made with that person alive, we’re talking about some kind of treatment that’s directly related to the cancer,” he said. But if the cut marks were made after his death, “it means that this is a medical autopsy investigation of that cancer.”
Either way, “the idea that they did a surgical intervention is amazing,” Camarós added. “But we cannot distinguish between treatment and autopsy.”
medical ‘knowledge and mastery’
Medicine in ancient Egypt, widely documented in medical texts such as the Ebers Papyrus and the Kahun Papyrus, was undoubtedly sophisticated, and the new findings provide important, direct evidence of this knowledge, said Dr. Ibrahem Badr, associate professor in the Department of the Gaeltacht. restoration and conservation of antiquities at Misr University of Science and Technology in Giza, Egypt.
“We can see that ancient Egyptian medicine was not entirely based on herbal remedies like medicine in other ancient civilizations,” said Badr, who was not involved in the new research. “It depended directly on surgical practices.”
But while this evidence from antiquity was well studied during the 19th and 20th centuries, 21st century technologies, such as those used in the new study, are revealing previously unknown details about the Egyptian healing arts. ancient, Badr added.
“The research provides a new and compelling direction to re-evaluate the history of medicine and pathology among the ancient Egyptians,” he said. The study authors’ methods “translate their findings from the realm of uncertainty and archaeological possibility to scientific and medical certainty.”
The scientists also found cancerous lesions in a second skull from the Duckworth collection. Labeled E270 and dating from 664 BC to 343 BC, it belonged to an adult woman who was at least 50 years old. The team identified three lesions on the specimen where malignant tumors had damaged the bone.
Unlike skull 236, E270 showed no signs of disease-related surgery. But there were long-healing fractures in the woman’s skull, showing the success of early medical intervention for head injuries.
“That person lived many years after that trauma,” said Camarós.
Writing a cancer ‘biography’
The analysis of the two skulls is “an amazing piece of research that provides new and clear scientific evidence about the field of pathology and the development of medicine among the ancient Egyptians,” said Badr.
Badr, who collaborates with scientists from Europe and the United States to study atherosclerosis (plaque buildup in arterial walls) in ancient Egyptian mummies, explained that his work follows the same scientific direction as the skull investigation. By conducting detailed examinations of mummies using 21st century technologies such as CT scans and DNA sequencing, Badr and his colleagues hope to further demonstrate the extent of medical knowledge in ancient Egypt.
“There is an urgent need to re-evaluate the history of Egyptian medicine using these scientific methodologies,” said Badr. “By using these modern techniques, we will be able to study and gain a more comprehensive and precise understanding of medicine in ancient Egypt.”
The new findings also help complete part of cancer’s “obscure biography” by adding a chapter written thousands of years ago, Camarós said.
“The more we look into the past, the more we know that cancer was much more widespread, much more present than we thought,” he said.
Medical milestone
The ancient Egyptian view of cancer focused on the visible tumors that produced the disease. The earliest recorded observation of cancer is in an ancient Egyptian medical text called the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, which dates back to around 3000 BC to 2500 BC. This text contains 48 case studies covering a variety of diseases, including one description of breast cancer.
Although healers in ancient Egypt may have known about cancer, treating it was another story. Most of the medical cases in the Edwin Smith papyrus included mentions of medicines or medical strategies. But there was none for the breast cancer patient’s tumors, Camarós said.
“It specifically says there is no treatment,” he said. “They realized that this was a limit to their medical knowledge.”
However, the incisions around the skull tumors suggest that healers in ancient Egypt wanted to change that, surgically removing the tumors to cure the patient, or to examine the tumors more closely.
“We have these two possibilities: in a way they tried to treat it, or in a way they tried to understand it medically, probably in terms of treating it in the future,” said Camarós. “I think that’s a milestone in the history of medicine.”
Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.
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