Did ancient Egyptians use surgery to treat brain cancer?

Scientists say they’ve found evidence from ancient skulls that doctors performed operations on cancerous tumours.

Ancient Egyptians may have tried to treat cancer with surgery more than 4,000 years ago, a study has revealed.

The findings were published in May in the journal Frontiers in Medicine and add to a growing body of work seeking to expand our understanding of how one of the world’s most important civilisations tried to tackle diseases, especially one as deadly as cancer.

Researchers have long known that medicine in ancient Egypt was more advanced than in many other ancient civilisations. Some of the earliest references to physicians date back to that period with procedures like bone setting and dental fillings common practice.

What scientists did not know until now was the extent to which its physicians may have tried to investigate and operate on cancerous tumours in the brain.

Scientists studying skulls from the era say they have found physical evidence of invasive procedures for brain tumours that prove physicians were trying to learn more about a disease we now call cancer. The discovery could also mark the first known case of surgical treatment for the disease in ancient Egypt.