The antiquity of disease / by Roy L. Moodie.

Roy Lee Moodie

Date:: [1923]

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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found only eleven examples in an examination of 10,000 European skulls, although Ahrens elsewhere reported 17 per cent occurrence among 470 German skulls examined. Oetteking found thirteen cases of Cribra orbitalia in an examination of 182 ancient Egyptian skulls. These interesting pathological conditions, known as Cribra cranii (parietalia) and Cribra orbitalia, are not to be confused with the activities of beetles which produce porosities in ancient skulls, but of such a different character that they are not at all similar. RICKETS IN ANCIENT EGYPT Definite evidences of the occurrence of rickets have not yet been found in the human bodies examined from the ancient graves of Egypt, although Poncet, in the memoir by Lortet and Gaillard on the mummified fauna of ancient Egypt, has described rickets in the skeleton of an apeG F. Wood Jones remarks in this connection: Some diseases—notably rickets and syphilis—if at all common must inevitably have left traces of their presence on the bony structure of the body, and that such traces have not been found in the large series of bodies examined at Riga and Hesa cemeteries, and by Dr. Elliot Smith in other cemeteries in Egypt, is strong presumptive evidence that the diseases did not occur. The infant mortality was apparently a high one, and great numbers of young people, of all ages up to puberty, are found in all the cemeteries, and yet not one of the cardinal signs of the bony manifestations of rickets has been seen in any case. The occurrence of this disease among modern apes has been discussed by Bland-Sutton and by Frassetto. Poncet’s observations on rachitis in the mummified apes of ancient Egypt is thus an addition to our previous knowledge. The evidence is to be found in a set of

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