In a new work, archaeologists examined the bones of several hundred medieval Englishmen, finding that approximately
Up to this point, we assumed that the mainthe causes of death in the Middle Ages were various infectious diseases such as dysentery or plague, as well as war and famine. Now we have to add malignant tumors to this list.
Jenna Dittmar, Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the UK
However, during the work, a problem arose: most types of malignant neoplasms are present in the soft tissues of the body and quickly disappear after death.
However, the authors noted thatSuch forms of cancer often penetrate human bones and leave characteristic deformations and damage inside them. Based on this observation, the researchers used a CT scanner to illuminate the remains of 143 inhabitants of medieval Cambridge who lived on its territory in the 6th-16th centuries AD.
Metastases were found in the bones of 3.5% of the studiedindividuals. Given the typical incidence of secondary tumor foci, this means that approximately 9-14% of the inhabitants of medieval Europe had malignant tumors at the time of their death.
This figure was called unexpectedly high.Previously, it was believed that cancer affected on average less than 1% of European residents, since there were no industrial enterprises or other sources of carcinogens.
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