History and palaeopathology of malignant tumours - Strouhal - 2009

Historical sources furnish valuable, but only indirect data on occurrence of past malignant tumours, sometimes also on their kinds or therapy, but not on their morphology and frequency. In distinction to it, palaeopathology, using examination of finds of cancers by gross morphology, standard radiography, computed tomography, as well as light microscopy, scanning or transmission electron microscopy and laser confocal microscopy can distinguish malignant tumours from the benign ones, and both kinds of tumours from other pathological conditions. Assembling results of our own investigation together with data on cases from the literature, we created a databasis of 183 skeletal finds from the Old World, divided into 5 diagnostic groups. Mean ages at death of the afflicted people for each group were determined. Their geographic distribution comprised 20 European, 4 Asian and 2 African countries with the highest representation of finds from Ancient Egypt with Nubia. The assembled series enabled a trial of their diachronic study. In Europe, they were only rarely found in prehistoric time before beginning of the Christian era, while in later periods they revealed an increase as expected. In Egypt with Nubia, on the contrary, they increased in a wavy manner with peaks in periods of cultural upheaval.

Keywords

Skeletal cancor - Old World - diagnostic groups - mean age - geographic distribution - diachronic growth - Europe - Egypt with Nubia

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