Your circulatory system, also know as your cardiovascular system is amazing. We now know a great deal about how it works, but this was not always the case!
The Ancient Egyptian doctors, and other healers were the best in the world at the time. Ancient Egyptian physicians discovered the link between the human heart, the pulse, and a number of health related conditions. However, they also believed the heart, not the brain was responsible for emotions, intelligence and memory. You will have heard the idiom “learning by heart” to describe memorising information. This is often attributed to the ancient Greeks. Their belief in the importance of the heart in so many areas, led to them leaving the heat in the body during mummification. This was to ensure it was available to them during the afterlife.
They were very clean people, loved life and lived not too differently to us. However, scientists have discovered that the upper classes suffered greatly with cardiovascular diseases. X ray scans of Egyptian mummies show signs of atherosclerosis. This is life-threatening – caused by fat and calcium clogging the arteries. It increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes. We cannot know for sure the diet and lifestyle of Ancient Egyptians, but we do know the upper classes ate beef, duck and goose, and drank wine. On the other hand most peasants survived off wheat and vegetables. This goes someway to explaining why many of the richer upper classes probably died from cardiovascular related diseases!
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