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[Gynaecological oncology from the Egyptian papyruses to Hippocratic texts]
1Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale, Università "La Sapienza", Roma, Italia.
Medicina Nei Secoli
|January 1, 1994
Abstract:
There is little paleopathological evidence of gynaecologic cancer in antiquity. Indeed descriptions of lesions of tumor-like pathologies may be found in the medical texts - Egyptian papyruses and the Hippocratic Corpus - in particular, they offer some interesting descriptions of gynecological tumoral diseases, which were well known because they were surface-diseases (e.g. breast cancer) or inspectable ones (e.g. uterine cancer). Thus literature supports the absence of paleopathological evidence and helps us in reconstructing the history of cancer.