The antiquity of disease / by Roy L. Moodie.

Roy Lee Moodie

Date:: [1923]

Credit: The antiquity of disease / by Roy L. Moodie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

145/174 page 125

$lesions never extend into the substance of the bone but are entirely superficial. The hands of one mummy of the time of the Persian Occupation (about 525 b.c.) showed enlargements of the heads of the first phalanges which may be regarded as Bouchard’s nodosities, a malformation whichBouchard has shown to be caused by chronic dilatation of the stomach. Fractures, with or without callus, are quite common, being described in a left first rib, tibia, and fibula, and a very badly healed leg bone fracture. Smith and Jones have described a number of other fractures and have figured them in great detail. They figure also an interesting skull of an ancient Egyptian, showing an erosion of the floor of the brain case due to a carotid aneurism. Caries and alveolar osteitis are frequently met with, and Ruffer has described a number of these cases often associated with necrosis of the surrounding bone, as well as by rarefying periodontitis. He made a special study cf these diseases in the skeletons found at Merawi, representing people of the Twenty-fifth and Twenty- sixth dynasties (712-550 b.c.), and at Faras of the Meroitic age (100 B.C.-300 a.d.). His study is devoted especially to the teeth in adults. There were lesions of the teeth (caries, periodontal disease, alveolar osteitis) in all but two of a series of thirty-six skulls. The lesions were present in the following order of frequency: (1) impaction, (2) attrition, (3) caries, (4) abscesses and fistulae, (5) periodontitis and pyorrhea alveolaris. Besides the very bad dentition there were many fractures. Wormian bones were occasionally observed. Two bones$

The antiquity of disease / by Roy L. Moodie.

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