Toxicity and Health – Ancient Egypt and Today Name: ______

E. Napp Date: ______

Compelling Question: Why does science – as an evolving understanding of the natural world – lead to surprising changes in humanity’s understanding of what is healthy and unhealthy and how does this changing paradigm impact the decisions and choices humans make?

Part I: Reading – The Benefits of Lead-Based Eye Makeup

“Could lead-based eye makeup actually help the user? For generations, scientists have assumed that lead-based makeup had to be dangerous. They scoffed at the ancient Egyptians use of lead eye makeup, which dates back at least to the time of Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, and probably earlier.

Analysis of fifty-two samples held in the Louvre museum in Paris, done in 2010, identified four different lead-based chemicals in ancient Egyptian eye makeup. Galena produced dark shades and added shine, while cerussite, laurionite, and phosgenite made lighter shades. One chemist explained: ‘Lead and arsenic, among other metals, make beautiful color pigments…Because they make an attractive color and because you can create a powder with them, it makes sense to use it as a skin colorant.’

Lead in small doses was not enough to poison the user, these researchers explain. The average life expectancy of the Egyptians was under forty, long before mild exposure to lead would cause cancer. In fact, the lead in eye makeup helped to protect the eyes – at least in the short term. The Nile’s floodwaters harbored dangerous bacteria that could enter the eye and cause conjunctivitis and related illnesses. But because lead makeup killed bacteria, it helped to prevent eye infections.

Aware of the protective function of eye makeup, Egyptians credited the makeup with healing powers granted, they believed, by the gods Horus and Ra. The makers of eye makeup recited prayers to these gods as they mixed the makeup, hoping to enhance its protective functions.

Two of these lead-based elements, laurionite and phosgenite, do not occur naturally: the Egyptians synthesized them specifically for use in eye makeup. The authors of the report concluded, saying ‘It is no wonder that ‘kemej,’ the Egyptian word that referred to the Egyptian land and to the black earth of the Nile valley, was handed to us via the Greeks and then the Arabs to eventually coin our present ‘chemistry.’

~ Voyages in World History

  • On a separate piece of paper, create a tree chart similar to the one below with significant facts from the reading

Part II: Enduring Issue – Benefits of Toxicity

Article: Toxic Chemicals in Fruits and Vegetables Are What Give Them Their Health Benefits

Scientific American, Mark P. Mattson, 2015

“When asked why eating lots of fruits and vegetables can improve health, many people will point to the antioxidants in these foods. That reasoning is logical because major diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes involve cell damage caused by chemicals called free radicals that antioxidants neutralize.

As a neuroscientist working to understand what goes wrong in the brain, I have long been aware that free radicals disrupt and sometimes kill neurons. And conversely, I know that people who regularly consume vegetables, fruits and other plant products thought to contain high levels of antioxidants tend to have healthier brains and to be less likely to suffer from neurodegenerative diseases. But the antioxidants story is not quite so simple.

Indeed, when rigorously evaluated in controlled trials in animals and humans, antioxidants, such as vitamins C, E and A, have failed to prevent or ameliorate disease. How then do fruits and vegetables promote health?

The emerging answer has much to do with the strategies that plants have evolved over millions of years to protect themselves from pests. Bitter-tasting chemicals made by plants act as natural pesticides. When we eat plant-based foods, we consume low levels of these toxic chemicals, which mildly stresses cells in the body in much the same way that exercise or going without food for long periods does. The cells do not die – in fact, they get stronger because their response to the stress shores up their ability to adapt to still more stress. This process of bolstering cellular resilience is called hormesis – and a growing body of research indicates that it accounts for the health benefits of consuming fruits and vegetables. Understanding hormesis’s effects may even provide new ways to prevent or treat some of the most devastating brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and stroke.”

  • Create a Venn diagram comparing findings from the reading on eye makeup in Ancient Egypt and the reading on toxicity as an added benefit to eating fruits and vegetables – be sure to note overlapping conclusions.

Adding Complexity to Complexity:

Of course, not all practices are beneficial even after years of revisiting the practice and evaluating the impact on health.

Footbinding in China

“When girls turned ten, their mothers started to bind their feet by wrapping long strips of cloth around them and gradually tightening them until the foot shrank. During the Song dynasty, bound feet were only slightly smaller than normal feet, but in the nineteenth century the ideal bound feet measured only 3 inches.” ~ Voyages in World History

  • Compelling Question – Why is the pursuit for perfection in beauty more profoundly damaging form women than men? Or is it?

Bringing It to the Present: In China, foot binding slowly slips into history

By Kit Gillet, Los Angeles Times, 2012

In the village of Liuyi, China, there are only about 30 women left who followed a once-common tradition that was painful but also bonded mothers and daughters.

LIUYI, China — Bathed in a faint afternoon sunlight that seems to highlight every wrinkle on her face and hands, Fu Huiying hobbles around her dusty home. Nearby, chopped vegetables suggest a dinner half-made, and the smoke of years of cooking has stained the wall behind a small gas stove.

But the eyes are drawn to Fu’s deformed feet and the tiny, ornate shoes on the floor next to her, both objects marking the 76-year-old as one of the last of a kind.

For almost a millennium, the practice of foot binding was prevalent across Chinese society, starting with the wealthier classes but over the years spreading down through urban and then poorer rural communities. Now the ancient, some say barbaric, practice is almost gone.

Isolated from the country’s key cultural and administrative hubs, the area around Liuyi, a village of about 2,000 people in southern China’s Yunnan province, was one of the last places in the country to end the tradition.

A decade ago, there were more than 300 women like Fu in the village. Now there are just 30, by her reckoning, and because they are all elderly, they rarely come down to the village center, where they once gathered to dance and hand-sew the doll-size shoes they wore.

“Before the [Communist takeover in 1949], all of the girls in the village had to bind their feet. If they didn’t do this, no man would marry them,” says Fu, sitting on a wooden stool in her dusty home on the outskirts of the village, her feet unwrapped.

The feet of girls as young as 5 would be broken and bound tightly with cotton strips, forcing their four smallest toes to gradually fold under the soles to create a so-called 3-inch golden lotus, once idealized as the epitome of beauty.

The process would take many years and would lead to a lifetime of labored movement, as well as a regular need to rebind the feet.

The practice fell out of favor at the turn of the 20th century, viewed as an antiquated and shameful part of imperialist Chinese culture, and was officially banned soon after. But in rural areas, the feet of some young girls were still being bound into the early 1950s. In Liuyi, the practice didn’t stop until around 1957.

“I started the process in 1943 when I was 7,” says Fu, who smiles at the memory of those youthful days. At the beginning it hurt with every move I made, but I agreed to go on with the process because it is what every girl my age did.”

“My mother had bound feet, and her mother, and her mother,” she says, trailing off, unsure just how many generations it went back.

Yang Yang, who was born in Liuyi, says his late mother was one of the last women in the village to let out her feet, loosening the daily bindings so that they would become less restrictive. Yang, who lives in the nearby town of Tonghai, has written two books telling the stories of his mother and the women of the village. His mother died in 2005.

“In ancient China, men preferred women with small feet, and in a male-dominated society where the best a woman could do was marry well, the reality was that what men wanted, men got,” he says.

Foot binding was also a strong multi-generational tie for women, with the procedure performed by the women in a family.

“It was a strong tradition passed from mother to daughters, entangled with shoemaking, how to endure pain and how to attract men. In many ways, it underpinned women’s culture,” says Dorothy Ko, a history professor at Barnard College in New York and author of “Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding.”

“It is hard to romanticize the practice and I am happy to see it go, but it is a pity there is no comparable, but obviously less painful, practice to take its place and bond generations,” Ko says.

In Liuyi, even after the practice was banned, Fu says, she and others were hesitant to stop tightly binding their feet and hid them from officials, worried that the ban would be temporary. They also viewed their bound feet as desirable and something to be proud of.

“We all thought our bound feet looked beautiful,” she says, smiling.

In the 1980s, some of the remaining women started performing dances together, which eventually became an unusual tourist attraction until their decreasing numbers and mobility eventually brought the practice to an end.

Fu remembers the dances fondly, though nowadays she spends most of her time looking after her great-grandchildren and caring for the house where four generations of her family live.

“Whenever there was some big event we would all get altogether, dress up in beautiful clothing and dance. Other times we would just meet to sew our shoes,” she says.

Fu carefully wraps her feet and slides them back into her intricately sewn shoes.

“I’ve lived a good life,” she says. “I am proud to be part of the tradition, but I wouldn’t want my daughter or granddaughters to have had to go through it.”

  • How do cultural ideas shape perceptions that may be beneficial or not?