Fluctuating disease rates, innovative treatments and talk about “moonshots” in the White House can make cancer seem like a modern plague. But a new discovery highlights how people dealt with the disease and searched for a cure as far back as the ancient Egyptians.
Scientists led by Edgard Camarosa paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain was studying an approximately 4,600-year-old Egyptian skull when they discovered signs of brain cancer and its treatment.
“There was an awkward silence in the room as we knew what we had just discovered,” said Dr. Camaros.
Using a microscope, he and Tatiana Tondini of the University of Tübingen in Germany and Albert Isidro of the Sagrat Cor University Hospital in Spain, the study's other authors, found lacerations around the edges of the skull surrounding dozens of lesions that previous researchers was linked to metastatic brain cancer. The shape of the cuts indicated that they were made with metal tools. This discovery, reported in a study published Wednesday in the magazine Frontiers in medicinesuggests that the ancient Egyptians studied brain cancer using surgery. If the cuts were made while the person was alive, they may have even tried to treat it.
The new discovery not only expands the scientific knowledge of Egyptian medicine, but could also push back the timeline of humanity's documented attempts to treat cancer by as much as 1,000 years.
Cancer has plagued humans for as long as we have existed, and even still long ago affected life on earth.
“Cancer is as old as time,” said Dr. Camaros. “Even dinosaurs suffered from cancer.”
Paleopathologists such as Dr. Camarós study the evolution of a disease and try to understand or treat it. For example, we know that people in prehistoric times were affected by cancers that no longer exist. He and his colleagues hope that unraveling the changing nature of cancer over millennia can yield information that can help design treatments for today.
Although cancer was probably not well understood, medicine in Egypt was advanced compared to much of the ancient world. An Egyptian document called the Edwin Smith – Papyrus, written about 3,600 years ago, refers to what some researchers believe is a case of cancer. That text describes 'a serious illness' for which 'there was no treatment'.
People in ancient Egypt also operated on skulls in other ways. The team of Dr. Camarós also reports in the study that they found evidence of successful treatment of a traumatic injury on another skull, this one 2,600 years old.
Casey L. Kirkpatrick, a bioarchaeologist and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said the new paper presents the first physical evidence of a possible cancer treatment by ancient Egyptians.
And by documenting additional ancient historical evidence of the disease, Dr. Kirkpatrick that the study had another benefit.
“It can also remind us that cancer is not a modern disease,” she said, “which could help alleviate the guilt of those currently affected by cancer and who worry about the role their lifestyle has played in its development.”
Just as cancer treatment was a frontier for the ancient Egyptians, the exploration of the deep past by modern researchers is fraught with uncertainty. The researchers say it is impossible to determine whether the surgical marks on the skull were made before death – indicating treatment – or after. Many cancers also originate in soft tissues, leaving the bones unaffected. This poses a challenge to modern scientists because bones are the only thing that typically survives in the fossil record.
Despite these obstacles, Dr. Camarós said the new discovery gave scientists a new perspective on what to look for. He plans to next search for similar evidence at ancient sites in Kenya.
“I'm sure this is just one example,” he said.