Doctors usually recommend several measures for stroke survivors, including exercising that require a walker or a cane, in addition to a leg crutch that maintains the body’s balance and stability during the walking retraining.
A team including researchers from Spain’s Universidad de Alcalá (UAH), New Jersey City University, and the American University of Cairo (AUH), discovered that ancient Egyptians had applied similar measures to rehabilitate stroke patients. The discovery involved an ancient Egyptian mummy from the 25th Dynasty, unearthed by the Spanish-Egyptian mission working at the Dra Abu el-Naga necropolis located on the West Bank of the Nile, in Luxor (southern Egypt).
The mummy labeled “Ind-6833” is one of 17 embalmed mummies at the tomb chapel of Hery (TT 12) of the early Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1550-1292 BC).
After X-rays and examinations, archeologists found the mummy marks the oldest leg injury in a stroke patient ever, and unveils unfamiliar measures taken at the time to cope with the injury that caused hemiplegia in the left part of the body.
In the study published in the latest issue of the journal World Neurosurgery, the researchers said their findings show that the measures adopted to treat patients after a stroke are similar to the recommendations that physicians currently recommend in such cases. The archeologists found that canes and crutches were used by the ancient Egyptians to support the affected leg.
According to the team, the body belonged to a woman, between 25 and 40 years of age. The type of mummification was of a high level, with excerebration and evisceration carefully performed. She suffered a stroke late in life and lived with the results for several years.
“Ancient Egyptians were among the first people to apply medical interventions. The new discovery is not surprising, as ancient Egyptians were the first to provide a detailed brain description, according to the Edwin Smith Papyrus,” Bassem al-Shamaa, historian and Egyptologist, said on the new discovery.
“When you examine a man with a wide wound reaching the skull bones and exposing the brain, you could sense the wound with your hand and feel that the surface of the brain in the bottom of the wound is like a slag on the surface of fused copper inside a melting pot. You could also notice pulses that resemble the pulses you feel when you place your hand on the head of a newborn whose skull bones are still not fused,” he explained.
“These findings deny what some claimed about a regression Ancient Egypt witnessed under the rule of the 25th Dynasty during the Nubian occupation. The new discovery should motivate researchers to restudy that period, whose excavations have always been subject to religious and ideological interpretations. The new discovery suggests that period had probably witnessed medical procedures and interventions,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat”.
