REVIEW BY STEPHEN ROBERTS One of the shoutouts on the cover of Dan Jones’ new biography of Henry V is courtesy of Dan Snow, which tickled me as I know the two historians have been mistaken for one another on…
A skull dating to the Old Kingdom bears evidence that might indicate an attempt to treat cancer, according to new research published by Tatiana Tondini, Albert Isidro, and Edgard Camarós in Frontiers in Medicine. Analysis of the skull, from the…
Rosalie David and Roger Forshaw consider the contribution made by ancient Egyptians to the development of surgery, and the extent to which their knowledge was transmitted to later civilisations.
REVIEW BY J PETER PHILLIPS In contrast with previous works on this subject, which have focused exclusively on the remedies available to ancient Egyptian medical practitioners, this work also considers the subject from the viewpoint of the patient – a…
Evidence of what appears to be the earliest known surgical amputation of a limb, dating to c.31,000 years ago, has been identified in Borneo.
Analysis of the remains of an elderly woman buried at the Dolmen of El Pendón, in northern Spain, has identified the earliest known evidence of successful ear surgery, 5,300 years ago. The skull was discovered by researchers from the University…
Archaeologists in Spain have unearthed a 5,300-year-old Neolithic skull bearing the earliest known evidence of ear surgery ‘in the history of humankind’. Since 2016, excavations at the Dolmen of El Pendón in Burgos, Spain, have shed light on a megalithic…
This book examines aspects of the medicine practised in the Roman Empire from the reign of Augustus to that of Marcus Aurelius. ‘Roman medicine’ was an amalgam, which combined the theories and practices of Greek physicians operating within the so-called…
A brief look at some of the latest exciting archaeological stories.
Historian of military medicine Mick Crumplin takes us into the grisly world of Napoleonic-era casualty treatment.