Болезни древних людей

Легенда о «золотом веке» — это только небылицы. Даже в виде сказки она является заблуждением, порожденным слабыми. Это — тормоз для дерзаний. Легенда не окрыляет, как сказки о «сапогах-скороходах», «ковре-самолете», «волшебной палочке». Она, наоборот, подрезает крылья, вселяет недоверие к преодолению трудностей, к поискам нового, сковывает поднимающиеся и уже поднявшиеся силы. Для нас существует только один путь — вперед и выше.

Summary

The present work is the first Russian publication on human paleopathology covering a period from the Neanderthaloid stage and up to recent times. A number of monographs dealing with paleopathology of man and animals have been published in some other countries. Being of a definite scientific importance they accounted for the fact that the new branch of science has been acknowledged as such and gave rise to a growing interest to further investigations carried along that line. However, all those papers seem to lack the exhaustive completeness of observed data that is characteristic of the present book. Having proved the existence of many pathological changes in bygone epochs the authors of respective publications never attempted to show the value of their finds for practical application in medicine of the present day, particularly as a means of making modern X-ray diagnostics more accurate. While this is one of the main objects the present monograph is aiming at. There is no doubt that a good knowledge of the past, to which we are closely linked, helps us to acquire a better insight and understanding of the present.

Anatomical and radiological studies of osseous remains of man found in excavations, enable us to throw light on the duration of human life in far off days, on the rate of senility process in the bone-and-joint system, on the frequency of injury and illnesses, as well as on the peculiarities of the course they took.

Judging by the state of skeletons the duration of human life was brief. Skeletons showing signs of physiological senility, characteristic of advanced and old age have rarely been found. Great was the death rate in young children with no apparent changes in the skeleton. Thus, for instance, bones of children constituted about 33 p. c. of the total skeleton finds in the Sarkel-on-the-Don barrows, dated to the X–XII c. c. A. D. There is no doubt that death rate in childhood was still much greater. The fact is confirmed by evidence obtained from excavated barrows in Khakass district (from a later period of the neolithic epoch and until the I c. A. D.), as well as in the Trans-baikal region (back from the Bronze Age up to I c. A. D.), and in other places.

Centuries and millenniums ago as in our days pathological changes in macerated bones showed considerable individual variability, according to the size and severity of the lesion and the number of bones affected. However much those may vary, some fundamental characteristics of every pathologic process are essentially the same. This enables us to recognize abnormalities and morbid changes (both in their early stages and in a far advanced stage) observed in human skeletons of any epoch, from the early Stone Age and up to our days.

Degenerative dystrophic lesions of joints and semi-joints, as premature symptoms of senility, proved to be the most frequent conditions observed in skeletons. Those are deformative arthrosis, spondylosis and spondyloarthro-sis, as well as osteochondrosis of the intervertebral disks.

The extent and severity of these lesions as well as the number of bones affected are rarely as considerable in modern man as they had been in far off epochs. Premature infirmity due to degenerative dystrophic lesions of the locomotion apparatus of the human body had once been a most frequent phenomenon (Khakass district, from the late neolithic epoch, Bronze Age and up to the I c. A. D.; Eski-Kermen, Crimea, V–XII c. c. A. D.; Lake Ladoga region, XI–XII c. c. A. D.; Sarkel, X–XII c. c. A. D. and other regions).

In some regions traumatic lesions have been most frequent, battle injuries inclusive (Transbaikalia, the Selenga region, nomads of the VIII–XII v. c.; borderline town and fortress Sarkel, X–XII с. c.; Eski-Kermen, V–XII с. c.). Satisfactory union of fragments may be not unfrequently observed even in medial fractures of the femoral neck (South Siberia, a nomad VIII–X c. c. A. D.; Sarkel, X–XII с. c.). Unsatisfactory results have been observed in fractures, where the ends of the fractured bone overlapped each other (since extension was not applied), and also in complicated fractures. However, the number of bones bearing traces of complicated fractures, on the whole, is not great.

Frequently the nature of injury enabled us to learn something about the weapon that inflicted it. It refers not only to instances when fragments of flint or bronze arrowheads have been found in the injured bones. The discovery of such finds witnessed to the fact in what epoch the tragic event occurred.