Palaeopathology And Evolutionary Medicine

"The volume aims to encourage more co-produced research addressing questions about human health, past and present by scholars working in evolutionary medicine (EM) and palaeopathology. It highlights future research that may promote that collaboration between palaeopathology and EM. This chapter starts with the premise that EM and palaeopathology have clear synergies in that they take a deep time perspective as they explore health in the past and in the present. It introduces the volume and first provides a background to evolutionary medicine from its first appearance in the early 1990s, including discussions about ultimate and proximate explanations for disease. It then highlights that the field of palaeopathology was initially established much earlier than EM and it is argued that practitioners before the 1990s, often physicians, were simply not exposed to evolutionary theory in relation to the diseases they were seeing both in the living and in the dead. However, the stage now looks set for more productive collaborations. A thematic overview of the volume and its individual chapters follows within the framework of the suggested categories for study within EM (Williams and Nesse 1990). The chapter finishes with some discussion about the One Health initiative, EM and palaeopathology, an initiative that is considered an essential area of study now and into the future"--

Can an evolutionary perspective be integrated in day-to-day practice and is it of value in medical education and training? If so, when and how? Highlighting exciting areas of research into the evolutionary basis of health and disease, Medicine and Evolution: Current Applications and Future Prospects answers these questions and more. I

This work explores and analyses the ways in which our ancient genes contend with, and influence, modern human life. It offers coverage of the points of contact between evolutionary biology and medical science.

This text shows how scientific and archaeological techniques can be used to identify the common illnesses and injuries from which humans suffered in antiquity. Charlotte Roberts and Keith Manchester study evidence gleaned from written records and works of art as well as from ancient human remains, and they combine a clinical interpretation of prevalent diseases with a graphic description of thier social, economic, and cultural consequences. This edition includes case studies from around the world and gives an account of the rapid technical advances that have dramatically increased our knowledge of illness in the distant past.

"Evidence for cardiovascular diseases found with ancient skeletons and mummies shows that they are not just a modern phenomenon. Presenting relevant case studies and methodologies, this volume will appeal to researchers and graduate students in bioarchaeology, medical anthropology and medicine as well as anybody interested in the history of disease"--

Unprecedented initiative in the world, the book compiles the available knowledge on the subject and presents the state-of-the-art in paleoparasitology – term coined about 30 years ago by Brazilian Fiocruz researcher Luiz Fernando Ferreira, pioneer in this science which is concerned with the study of parasites in the past. Multidisciplinary by essence, paleoparasitology gathers contributions from social scientists, biologists, historians, archaeologists, pharmacists, doctors and many other professionals, either in biomedical or humanities fields. With varied applications such as in evolutionary or migration studies, their results often depend on the association between laboratory findings and cultural remains. The book is divided into four parts - Parasites, Hosts, and Human Environment; Parasites Remains Preserved in Various Materials and Techniques in Microscopy and Molecular Diagnostics; Parasite Findings in Archeological Remains: a paleographic view; and Special Studies and Perspectives. Signed by authors from various countries such as Argentina, USA, Germany and France, the book has chapters devoted to the discoveries of paleoparasitology on all continents.

The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology provides readers with an overview of the study of ancient disease. The volume begins by exploring current methods and techniques employed by paleopathologists as means to highlight the range of data that can be generated, the types of questions that can be methodologically addressed, our current limitations, and goals for the future. Building on these foundations, the volume introduces a range of diseases and conditions that have been noted in the fossil, archaeological, and historical record, offering readers a foundational understanding of pathological conditions, along with their potential etiologies. Importantly, an evolutionary and highly contextualized assessment of diseases and conditions will be presented in order to demonstrate the need for adopting anthropological, biological, and clinical approaches when exploring the past and interpreting the modern world. The volume concludes with the contextualization of paleopathological research. Chapters highlight ways in which analyses of health and disease in skeletal and mummified remains reflect political and social constructs of the past and present. Health and disease are tackled within evolutionary perspectives across deep time and generationally, and the nuanced interplay between disease and behavior is explored. The volume will be indispensable for archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, and historians, and those in medical fields, as it reflects current scholarship within paleopathology and the field’s impact on our understanding of health and disease in the past, the present, and implications for our future.

Michael R. Zimmerman, MD, PhD is an anthropologist and retired pathologist. He obtained his medical degree and training in pathology from New York University as well as a degree in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has combined a full career in academic medicine with research in paleopathology, the study of diseases found through the examination of mummies and ancient skeletal human and prehuman remains. Recognized as one of the world's experts in this field, he is currently Adjunct Professor of Biology at Villanova University, Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Visiting Professor in the UK at the University of Manchester's KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology. He teaches courses in paleopathology, history of disease, medical anthropology and forensic anthropology. His studies have involved working with three archeologic expeditions in Egypt, where he examined mummies in the area of Luxor and the Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert. He has also examined a number of frozen mummies in Alaska as well as mummies from the Penn Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum. He has served as a consultant on the find of the Iceman, for the National Archives and Records Administration Special Access and Freedom of Information Act Unit, College Park, MD, President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board, and the National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, Office of Polar Programs. He has been invited to lectures at many museums, among them the British Museum, the Manchester Museum, Penn Museum, the University of Zurich's Institute of Evolutionary Medicine and the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman. His recent publications include: "Cancer: A New Disease, an Old Disease, or Something in Between?" in Nature Reviews Cancer; "Studying Mummies: Giving Life to a Dry Subject," in Palaeopathology in Egypt and Nubia: A Century in Review; and "PUM I Revisited: Tradeoffs in Preservation and Discovery," in The Anatomical Record. My Patients Were Mummies follows the many adventures of a career that took him to exotic parts of the world and has contributed to our understanding of the role that the evolution of diseases has had in human biological and cultural history.