But by tracking it back more than 5,000 years a pattern may emerge which might point to a cause, or aid in combating the infection.The bilharzia study will be only the beginning. Manchester has 21 human mummies and 34 mummified animals, assorted cats, birds rodents and even crocodiles. Correctly known as Schistosomiasis, it is carried by parasites which live on snails in stagnant water. Specialists on the 15-strong team of the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Project are working on the study in co-operation with the Egyptian Ministry of Health and the US Medical Service Corporation International.Using techniques developed at Manchester enabling certain diseases to be detected in small samples of tissue, it should be possible for the first time to add a new dimension to medical research, looking back over a 5,000-year timespan.Egyptians perfected the preservation of bodies by mummification around 2,600BC, using it first for royalty and then the upper and middle classes.
Only small samples are being sought - one or two grams of dry tissue and hopefully a snip of hair - but from this it should be possible to unlock thousands of years of disease history.The concept of a tissue bank arose out of an on-going study in the Nile valley into "bilharzia", a potentially fatal disease afflicting between 200 and 300 million people world-wide. Mummified bodies were carted off from tombs by the Nile in great numbers during the 18th and 19th centuries to become somewhat macabre curiosities in the museums of Europe. But Manchester has always had a more scientific bent. Dr Margaret Murray and an interdisciplinary team unwrapped and carried out necropsies (autopsies) on two mummies at the University of Manchester in 1908 and published the findings.Now a request has gone out world-wide to help in the establishment of the first Egyptian Mummy International Tissue Bank at the Manchester Museum. UPPER-CLASS Egyptians preparing for their journey for the afterlife cannot in their wildest dreams have imagined that it might take a tiny part of them to Manchester in the cause of medical science. "It was horrifying in terms of its impact and devastation."Unusual winds during his stay gave Mr Cook experience of the conditions the remaining islanders are living in.
Ash clouds drifted over the northern "safe zone," showering him with volcanic ash. Ash in the air is proving a more immediate health threat to Montserratians than the danger of being hit by a flow of gas and rock.The locals were clearly more interested in the England-West Indies Test and ignored the visitor during his five-hour stay. Most refugees did not even leave their tents or shacks at the Gerald's Bottom camp as his helicopter arrived from Antigua. Many said later that dust thrown up by helicopter landings, yards from their makeshift homes, adds to their hardship and is an insult to their dignity. In what he said was an effort to give "a very clear commitment by Britain to providing a viable economic and social future" for Montserratians, Mr Cook toured refugee shelters, a housing project, the one remaining secondary school and its only hospital.At Salem refugee shelter, on the edge of the northern zone still considered safe by scientists, the Foreign Secretary invited himself into a one-room shack. Claristine Allen, a grandmother forced to flee her home in the village of Cork Hill, showed him her two "bedrooms" - two double beds with sheets hung up as partitions.Hearing the Test commentary from behind one of the sheets, Mr Cook asked the score "135 for seven," came the reply. Mrs Allen pulled aside the sheet to show her husband Tom, flat on his back on the bed watching a tiny TV, with his three-year-old grandson Delston asleep beside him.
