Gynaecological Oncology from Egyptian Papyruses to Hippocratic Texts

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 intersting 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.