A pair of ancient Egyptian skulls, both thousands of years old, belonged to some of the earliest known cancer patients in history, according to a study published Wednesday.
The skulls had cut marks around cancerous tumors – providing evidence that ancient Egyptians explored ways to treat cancer through operations, said the study published in the Journal of Cancer. Frontiers in Medicine Daily.
The ancient Egyptians were known for their medical knowledge. The texts describe how they would treat a range of illnesses and injuries, in some cases constructing prosthetics and inserting false teeth.
But this glimpse into cancer treatment is a “milestone in the history of medicine”, says the study.
“We see that although the ancient Egyptians were able to manage complex skull fractures, cancer was still a frontier of medical knowledge,” said one of the study’s authors, Tatiana Tondini, in a statement.
The study’s lead author, Professor Edgard Camarós, added that the discovery was “unique evidence of how ancient Egyptian medicine would have tried to deal with or explore cancer more than 4,000 years ago”.
Camarós, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and his team analyzed two skulls held by the University of Cambridge’s Duckworth Collection, using micro-computed tomography and microscopic analysis of the bone surface, the study said.
“We wanted to learn about the role of cancer in the past, how prevalent this disease was in ancient times and how ancient societies interacted with this pathology,” said Tondini, a researcher at the University of Tübingen, in Germany.
One of the skulls belonged to a man and was dated to 2687 to 2345 BC, while the other was to a woman and dated to 663 to 343 BC.
The male skull had a large lesion surrounded by about 30 small metastatic lesions around it. To their great surprise, the researchers found cut marks around the injuries.
“When we first looked at the cut marks under the microscope, we couldn’t believe what was in front of us,” Tondini said.
“It appears that the ancient Egyptians performed some type of surgical intervention related to the presence of cancer cells,” said another co-author, Professor Albert Isidro, a surgical oncologist at Sagrat Cor University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain.
The female skull also had a large lesion consistent with a cancerous tumor that led to bone destruction, indicating that the person could be older. There are also two healed injuries from traumatic injuries, the study said.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
