Paleopathology in History of Medicine

Paleopathology in History of Medicine
The study of history of medicine is greatly helped by paleopathology, which is “the science of the disease which can be demonstrated in human and animal remains of ancient time.”

Paleopathology is concerned with evidence of disease that occurred during the long period that includes prehistory and continues until the beginning of scientific pathological anatomy.

By necessity, therefore, its object of study are almost exclusively biological specimens capable of lasting centuries and even millennia, namely bones and mummies.

The first study of bone paleopathology was published in 1774 by Esper, who described the femur of a cave bear with a lesion that he thought to be an osteosarcoma but which he later found to be fracture callus.

Subsequently, other naturalists (e.g Goldfuss, Cuvier, Walther, Schmerling, Mayer) described pathological lesions in bones of cave bears and lions.

About the middle of the nineteenth century, anthropologists and paleontologists became interested in the subject and the number of publications increased.

In the first decades of this century, Egyptian mummies were extensively studied, especially by Ruffer, whose papers were posthumously collected in a volume that became a classic on the subject.

In 1923, the American anatomist and anthropologist Roy L. Moonie published the first comprehensive book on paleopathology.

In 1930, a French army physician, Leon Pales, published another comprehensive monograph on the subject with the most complete bibliography up to that time.

Since 1930, interest in the field has continued and modern techniques have been applied to paleopathology.
Paleopathology in History of Medicine