Medicine: The Specialized Nubbin

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The mightiest of monarchs was dead. The royal embalmers removed most of his vital organs but left enough to show physicians of later ages what ailed him: hardening and narrowing of the vital arteries near the heart. The monarch was Merneptah, Pharaoh of Egypt at the time (some believe) of the Exodus. No fewer than 3,000 years had passed when the chief of the modern world's most powerful state had a heart attack brought on by the same type of disease in the arteries. Yet for all but a handful of these...

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