AN AUTOPSY that began almost 200 years ago has reached a conclusion. Dr Granville’s mummy died of tuberculosis.
Augustus Granville described his Egyptian mummy to London’s Royal Society in 1825. The remains are of a woman who died in Thebes around 600 BC, aged about 50. From his own autopsy, Granville concluded that she had died of ovarian cancer. But around 20 years ago, new tests suggested that the ovarian tumour was benign and that the mummy had malaria and inflamed lungs.
Now Helen Donoghue of University College London and her colleagues have found a short repetitive section of DNA…
