What Really Causes Alzheimer's Disease - Soil and Health Library

falciparum, which causes malaria, and Echinococcus granulosus,
often linked to liver and lung disease. Trichinella, a parasite
that causes trichinosis and which is usually contracted through
eating pork or other infected meats, was also found to have
been common in Ancient Egypt. Schistosoma haematobium,
the parasite responsible for the current schistosomiasis pandemic,
has been identified in two mummies. 16-17 It must be
admitted, however, that Egyptian dead are likely to be a very
poor source of information about Alzheimer’s disease, since
their brains were removed through their noses during the mummification
process. 18 Since the Egyptians thought intelligence
arose from the heart, ancient embalmers typically threw away
the brain.
The Egyptians, of course, were not the first to practise mummification.
The oldest mummies known are Chilean, created
by the Chinchorro culture, predating their Egyptian counterparts
by thousands of years. The Chiribaya, a pre-Columbian
coastal people who lived in what is now the desert of southern
Peru from 950 to 1350 AD, also mummified their dead. Beyond
this, many mummies have been discovered in China and elsewhere.
18 A PubMed search using two key words, “disease” and
“mummies,” revealed 61 matching publications. These described
everything from evidence of prehistoric tuberculosis
in America 19 and China 20 to louse infection in the Chiribaya. 21
A similar search based on “Alzheimer’s” and “mummies” found
no matches. Similarly, in the indexes of two books on the
topic, specifically Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures, edited
by Thomas Cockburn and colleagues, 22 and Disease,
authored by Joyce Filer, 23 no mention of Alzheimer’s disease
was found. While none of this negative evidence establishes
that the senile dementia recorded in the classical literature for
millennia was not Alzheimer’s disease, the crucial physical
evidence that it was appears to be missing. At best, the case
remains “unproven.”
17