Tiny etchings on a 4000-year-old skull suggest that the ancient Egyptians may have been the first people to try to treat cancer.
鈥淎ncient Egyptian medicine was very advanced,鈥� says at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. 鈥淭hey were able to deal with many conditions, including traumatisms and infections, and treat oral health.鈥�
Camar贸s and his colleagues studied two skulls held at the University of Cambridge鈥檚 Duckworth Laboratory collection. One skull belonged to a woman at least 50 years old who lived in Egypt between 663 and 343 BC. The other one is dated between 2687 and 2345 BC and belonged to a man between 30 and 35 years old.
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When the researchers viewed the specimens under the microscope, they saw that both skulls had big lesions that suggested the presence of cancerous tumours that degraded the bone.
The female probably had a type of bone cancer called osteosarcoma, says Camar贸s, and also had a couple of healed lesions that seem to be from traumatic injuries, perhaps from a sharp weapon at close range. These signs suggest that the ancient Egyptians may have been quite adept at treating traumatic or violent wounds.
The male probably had nasopharyngeal cancer, says Camar贸s, which begins in the tissues of the top of the throat. Around 30 smaller lesions around the skull indicate that the cancer had metastasised.
鈥淲e were looking at the bones with the microscope and suddenly some cut marks appear in relation to those tumours,鈥� says Camar贸s. These small incisions around the lesions hint that Egyptian doctors at the time tried to treat the cancer surgically or may have conducted exploratory operations after the person had died.
Although the male seems to have died due to cancer, this is the earliest known evidence of an attempt to treat it, says Camar贸s. 鈥淚t is a milestone in the history of medicine.鈥�
鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 have a word for cancer, but they did for swelling and tumour,鈥� says Camar贸s. 鈥淏ut the root of how we successfully treat cancer nowadays is there, 4000 years ago.鈥�
鈥淚t is likely that the therapeutic approach targeted the signs and symptoms associated with visible external lesions, without necessarily recognising its underlying disease,鈥� says at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley. 鈥淭he modern concept of cancer emerged only in a very recent period of our history. It is unlikely that an ancient Egyptian recognised cancers from other diseases with similar presentation.鈥�
Frontiers in Medicine
