ANCIENT SURGERY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 801, 23 October 1929, Page 9

ANCIENT SURGERY

REMAINS OF A PHARAOH EXAMINED NAPOLEON’S DISEASE (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Australian and N.Z. Press Association Reed. 11.32 a.m. LEEDS, Tuesday. Lord Moynihan, the famous surgeon, lecturing on “Surgery, Ancient and Modern,” discussed remarkable surgical operations of 1,000 years before Christ, and the actual anatomical remains of a Pharaoh of Moses’s time, and of Napoleon. Perhaps the most interesting visceral discovery, that which afflicted this Pharaoh, was of an oppression of a large vessel springing from his heart. it was found so well preserved that Mr. Shattalk, of the Royal College of Surgeons, was able to make sections of it to compare with those from a man recently dead. A portion of Napoleon’s viscera contained certain little tumours of the intestines, suggesting that death was cancerous; but Sir Arthur Keith, on re-examination, shows that the tumours were not malignant, but were similar to and perhaps identical with “Malta fever.” Lord Moynihan said the profession of medicine had been always closely related with religion. His attention was recently called to a pyramid at Sagarrah, which was the oldest soue building in the world. There were two lines of black hieroglyphics in a passage leading to the side of the chapel. The Australian troops, during the war, left their names and initials, and scribbled various columns on the altar of the temple. One wrote:—“l am the only survivor of my company. We fought at Gallipoli.—John Smith, Melbourne. 1917.” A hieroglyphic just uncovered read:—“l am the only survivor of my company! I fought in a punt, and I am come to worship at the temple of my fathers.” A name and a date about 1,250 B.C. followed.