#ancient surgery

Ancient Egyptians Performed Cancer Surgery

Evidence from a 4,000-year-old skull suggests ancient Egyptian doctors were handy enough to try surgically removing tumors from their patients.

A pair of ancient Egyptian skulls, both thousands of years old, belonged to some of history's earliest known cancer patients, according to a study published Wednesday.

The skulls had cut marks around cancerous growths — providing evidence that ancient Egyptians had explored ways to treat cancer through operations, said the study published in Frontiers in Medicine journal.

The ancient Egyptians were known for their medical know-how. Texts describe how they would treat a range of illness and injuries, in some cases by building prosthetic limbs and inserting false teeth.

But this glimpse into cancer treatment is a “milestone in the history of medicine,” the study said.

“We see that although ancient Egyptians were able to deal with complex cranial fractures, cancer was still a medical knowledge frontier,” one of the study's authors, Tatiana Tondini, said in a statement.

The study’s lead author, professor Edgard Camarós, added that the finding 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 looked at two skulls held by the University of Cambridge's Duckworth Collection, using micro-CT scanning and microscopic bone surface analysis, the study said.

“We wanted to learn about the role of cancer in the past, how prevalent this disease was in antiquity, and how ancient societies interacted with this pathology,” said Tondini, a researcher at Germany’s University of Tübingen.

One of the skulls belonged to a male and was dated from 2,687 to 2,345 B.C., while the other was a female and dated from 663 to 343 B.C.

The male skull had a large lesion surrounded by 30 or so small metastasized lesions around it. To their great surprise, researchers found cut marks around the lesions.

“When we first observed the cut marks under the microscope, we could not believe what was in front of us,” Tondini said.

"It seems ancient Egyptians performed some kind of surgical intervention related to the presence of cancerous cells," said another co-author, professor Albert Isidro, a surgical oncologist at the University Hospital Sagrat Cor, in Barcelona, Spain.

The female skull also had a large lesion consistent with a cancerous tumor that led to bone destruction, indicating the person might have been older. There are also two healed lesions from traumatic injuries, the study said.

By Patrick Smith.

Mysterious Skull Implanted With Strange Metallic Object

An elongated, cone-shaped skull with a possible metal implant could represent some of the earliest evidence from Peru of an ancient surgical implant. Or it could be a modern-day fake.

The fact that the skull, which was donated to the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma City, has a cone shape is nothing too unusual, as Peruvians during ancient times were known to squeeze children's heads with bands during development to achieve the distinctive shape.

However, the metal implant in this skull is highly unusual and, if authentic, would potentially be a unique find from the ancient Andean world.

In addition to this potential implant, the skull has a hole beneath the metal that was possibly created through trepanation. Trepanation is when a hole is inserted into a person's skull in an attempt to treat an injury or medical condition, and it was a common practice in the ancient world.

The Museum of Osteology, which has posted several pictures of this skull on its Facebook page, said its experts are not able to verify the authenticity of the metal implant at this time. A museum representative told Live Science that no carbon dating has been done and an archaeologist has yet to examine it up close.

Is the implant authentic?

Live Science talked to several scholars not affiliated with the museum to get their take on the implant's authenticity, and overall their opinion was mixed. Some were skeptical and suggested the implant is a forgery, while others suspect the implant could be the real deal.

Either way, several scientific tests will need to be done before a final determination can be made as to whether the implant is authentic, the scholars said.

"I'm quite dubious that this is anything authentic," John Verano, an anthropology professor at Tulane University in Louisiana, told Live Science in an email, referring to the metal implant possibly being a modern-day forgery even if the skull is legit.

"In a few words, I think this is something fabricated to make the skull a more valuable collectible," Verano said. This metal implant could have been inserted many decades ago, before either the museum or the donor owned it.

Verano has examined several Andean skulls that allegedly have metal implants and published a paper on the topic in 2010 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

In the paper, Verano describes skulls that supposedly held metal implants, but they were either forgeries, or the metal was not a surgical implant at all but instead was used as a grave offering.

Other scholars told Live Science that it's possible the metal implant could be real, but it's too early to say for certain until further tests have been carried out.

"I've never seen anything like this before. Based on the pictures, it looks like the metal piece was thinly hammered into shape," Danielle Kurin, an anthropology professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, told Live Science in an email.

"Based on the fracture patterns, this individual – [who] looks to be an older male – suffered a massive blunt-force trauma to the right side of the head. The fact that the radiating and concentric fracture lines show signs of healing suggests this individual survived at least several weeks to months," Kurin added.

Since metallurgical technology varied across the Andes at the time, tests on the metal in the skull could help to shed light on where it was made, Kurin said.

"It would also be helpful to have the skull X-rayed to determine if the piece of metal is covering a trepanation hole and/or an open cranial fracture."

There are a few cases from past discoveries where, after a trepanation, a piece of the person's bone or a gourd was placed in the hole that was cut out, Kurin said.

Additionally, in a 2013 American Journal of Physical Anthropology article, Kurin reported on a case where a person who lived in Peru about 800 years ago wore a tight-fitting skull cap that had a metal cap stitched onto it. They wore the cap like a helmet, providing protection for the area carved out by trepanation.

Kent Johnson, an anthropology professor at SUNY Cortland, also said that the metal implant could be authentic but again said that tests need to be done. However, regardless of whether or not the implant is real, the person it was placed on did survive an awful injury.

"It is fair to describe this individual as a survivor. There is extensive trauma to the right side of the cranium affecting the frontal, temporal and right parietal bones," Johnson told Live Science in an email, noting that the person seems to have survived for a time after these injuries.

"There is evidence of healing where the edges of the fractured bones had sufficient time to grow back together."

It's not clear at the moment when tests on the skull will take place.

Ancient Surgery – Written By Nicholas Rossis

Plenty of ancient resources mention medical procedures such as surgery. The early Chinese surgeon Hua Tuo (c. 140-208) is credited with being the first recorded person to use cannabis as an anesthetic. He reduced the plant to powder and mixed it with wine for administration prior to conducting surgery. Indeed, the Chinese term for “anesthesia” literally means “cannabis intoxication.” In Ancient…

LJS 433 Yoso zusetsu, written in Japan, ca. 1600

This manuscript is an illustrated treatise on the diagnosis of abscesses and tumors and their treatment, mostly through acupuncture or burning substances near the skin. The document was copied in Japan in Chinese for Japanese practitioners. The illustration above shows surgical instruments.