The ancient Egyptians were remarkably in the field of medicine – so noted for their skills and knowledge that we're , thousands of years later. But there were some things that the Egyptians struggled to treat. One of those should come as no surprise, since it still represents a significant challenge, even today.
That, of course, is – the mutation of living tissue into something malignant and deadly. Nevertheless, we have new evidence that the ancient Egyptians did not take cancer lying down. Two skulls currently housed in the University of Cambridge's Duckworth Collection show evidence of cancer and other injury – and signs of attempts to treat them.
"This finding is unique evidence of how ancient Egyptian medicine would have tried to deal with or explore cancer more than 4,000 years ago," of the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. "This is an extraordinary new perspective in our understanding of the history of medicine." The two skulls both show signs of cancer – but each, after careful microscopic and CT scan analysis, tells a very different story.
Skull number 236 belonged to a male individual who lived in ancient Egypt sometime between 2687 and 2345 BCE. He died in his early 30s, and his skull is riddled with around 30 lesions, consistent with metastasized carcinoma, although there are other possible diagnoses. Most of these lesions are relatively small, but there are some noticeably larger ones, including a coin-sized divot hollowed out as tissue was d.
