Researchers want tissue samples from body
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. -- The Egyptian mummy at Westminster College could help solve a medical mystery.
Pesed, a small female mummy appearing to be about 4 feet tall, now rests in a glass case in Westminster's Mack Science Library and could be part of a worldwide study of the evolution of a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis, also known as Bilharzia.
British medical researchers have asked to come and examine her and possibly take tissue samples, said Samuel Farmerie, curator of cultural artifacts for the college.
The college cultural artifacts advisory committee is still considering the request, he said.
The tissue samples would go to the Mummy Tissue Bank at the Manchester (England) Museum, which already has tissue samples from about 2,000 mummies.
Significance: The disease affected people in ancient Egypt and is believed to infect as many as 200 million to 300 million people today in 79 countries.
It affects about 20 percent of the population in Egypt, according to Medical Services Corp. International, an Arlington, Va., company that is involved in a joint study of the disease with Manchester researchers.
While it's not fatal, schistosomiasis does affect the liver, spleen and heart and can lead to complications that eventually become fatal.
The MSCI web site says the disease is transmitted to humans when they enter water contaminated with infected freshwater snails, which serve as intermediate hosts of the parasite.
Researchers at the Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank are checking to see how the disease has evolved over the centuries, which might hold a clue to its cure.
They won't know if Pesed was infected with schistosomiasis until tissue is taken from her liver.
Farmerie said if the process is too invasive, the college would not allow the researchers to take the tissues. It's not clear how they enter the mummy's body to get the tissues.
Mistreatment: Farmerie said special care has been given to the mummy since 1985 when student Susan Grandy Graff, an Egyptian history buff, started a fund-raising campaign to have Pesed cleaned and properly encased.
Before that time, Pesed had suffered from years of neglect and was being stored in a closet. Names and graduation years from students from the early 1900s are carved into her coffin and her head was cut off sometime in the 1930s.