The Queen is Dead: The Story of an Ancient Medicinal Tonic

After two years studying the dessicated contents of Queen Hathshepsut's beauty cream, a team of researchers at the University of Bonn have concluded that a carcinogenic substance in the flask may have poisoned her.

The queen, who was evidently obese and suffered from diabetes and liver cancer as well as eczema, ruled Egypt 3,500 years ago. The cream contained palm and nutmeg oil and fatty acids that relieve skin irritations, as well as benzopyrene, a highly carcinogenic hydrocarbon.

For the full story, as well as a grizzly photograph of the queen herself, see Queen Hatshepsut, Ancient Egyptian Leader, Might Have Accidentally Poisoned Herself: Experts.

Good old-fashioned trepanation!

Bruce Bower over at Science News reports that a new study conducted by anthropologist Efthymia Nikita of the University of Cambridge in England has found that men were drilling pieces out of each other's skulls to treat wounds or cure other ailments. Over two-thousand years ago!

Nikita, who studied three skulls that once belonged to living men who resided in what is now southwest Libya, determined that the "dime- to quarter-sized holes inside hollowed-out areas, as well as scraped-out depressions" were not from "disease, bone-chewing animals, accidental falls or intentional blows." They are, instead, evidence of surgical procedures performed thousands of years ago.

I wonder if any female skulls have the same pattern of holes and depressions, or if trepanation was just something the boys did back then.

To read the entire article, see: Ancient Saharan head cases

Spontanteous Human Combustion: It's Ablaze!

Do spontaneous human combustion events happen along some kind of geographical line? Has there been and will there be a "boom" in spontaneous human combustion cases? What is it like to combust spontaneously? These are just a few of the questions Larry E. Arnold, oft called the world's "foremost authority on the phenomenon" and author of Ablaze: The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion addresses in this two and a half hour interview available here. In addition, his book promises "hundreds of unbelievable examples of The Fire Within, culled from long-forgotten obscure medical journals and never-before-published interviews with witnesses to the impossible." Sounds great!

The Art of the Brain

Ian Chant recently blogged about a "Brain-Art Competition," designed to help "recognize the beauty and creativity of artistic renderings emerging from the neuroimaging community."

Contest categories included: Best 3-Dimensional Brain Rendering, Best Representation of the Human Connectome, Best Abstract Brain Illustration, and Best Humorous Brain Illustration.

Some great images in here. Enjoy!

Urine makes a comeback!

In the 1650s, it wasn't unheard of for doctors to diagnose disease based on observations of a patient's urine. What, exactly, were those doctors observing using the tools of the times? I'm not sure. However, recent research indicates that urine might be a better indicator than blood (today's standard) to diagnose diseases such as cancers and neurodegenerative disorders.

Using high-resolution Fourier transform mass spectrometry on urine samples collected from healthy subjects, researchers detected 1823 proteins (671 of which had never been previously reported in urine. Ninety percent of these were identified for the first time).

Akhilesh Pandey, who led the research team, says:

We have been able to identify some novel proteins which have implications in important diseases...These proteins are cathepsin L2 (CTSL2) linked to chronic kidney disease, sialyltransferase 1 (ST6GAL1) for acute childhood leukemia, insulin like growth factor binding protein 4 (IGFBP4) for prostate,ovarian and gastrointestinal cancers, mucin-like 1(MUCL1) for breast cancer, and neurocan (NCAN) for bipolar disorder.

To read the complete story, see Urine holds clue to deadly cancers.

The latest in medicinal tonics

Do you suffer from chronic pain? panic attacks? crippling anxiety? Anneli Rufus reports that a cure may be on the way: Prescription LSD!

Leading this wave is the Boston-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)... MAPS researchers have spent 15 years conducting international clinical trials whose results indicate that LSD and psilocybin counteract depression and anxiety and are effective pain-management tools while MDMA (ecstasy) conquers fear. Just this month, the Israeli Ministry of Health approved a new MAPS study using MDMA to treat PTSD.

Note that scientists are not saying that you can "recover by hitting a few raves." The drugs should instead be administered by professionals in "a safe, supportive, controlled setting."
To read the full story, see Why Prescription Ecstasy or LSD Could Happen Much Sooner Than You Think

Art and Brain Trauma?

Reporting for the New York Times, Dr. Abigail Zuger tells the story of Jon Sarkin, a chiropractor in Massachusetts who was plagued by a "high-pitched screech" that doctors shrugged off as "a vague abonormality near a nerve at the base of the brain that controls hearing and balance."

Maddened by the ceaseless racket, Dr. Sarkin underwent surgery to correct the problem, only to wind up in a coma. The man who emerged from the coma bore little resemblance to the man who fell into it several months before.

He was physically delicate and walked with a cane, but that was the least of it. His personality had morphed into a difficult teenager's: self-centered, unreliable, obsessive.

He also began to draw. Now, twenty years later, he has become "a full-fledged artist of some renown" and has sold work to The New York Times Magazine as well a private collectors. What started as a shriek heard only by himself, became unexpectedly transformative.


Read more here.