In case you missed it: mummy clue, college food, doctor-musicians, flu vaccine, worker health, Ruth L. Kirschstein; sports supplements, MGH inspection, autism coverage

In the Sunday Globe:

It was the oddest of scenes: A neurosurgeon delicately threaded a scope up the neck and into the skull of a disembodied, 4,000-year-old mummified head. Sweating with concentration, another doctor clamped a molar and began to rock it gently back and forth. Three hours later, the nerve-wracking operation yielded a tooth, a time capsule holding precious DNA, which might reveal the identity of the ancient Egyptian head.

Colleges trying to encourage a well-balanced diet have a message for students sizing up that all-you-can-eat smorgasbord in the dining hall: What you don’t know can help you.

As musicians from the Longwood Symphony Orchestra played selections from Dvorak’s “American Quartet,’’ 50 Vietnamese immigrants, mostly in their 70s and 80s, sat in plush chairs at a Dorchester day-care center for the elderly, listening raptly. Tears welled in Mary Nguyen’s eyes. Never in her 72 years had she heard such music, she said.

Patients swarmed a flu shot clinic yesterday at a Jamaica Plain pediatric office, overwhelming medical officials providing H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines for children.

Don’t read this sitting down. Walk, jog, take the stairs - anything to help soften the news that the health of the American worker is appalling, and declining.

Ruth L. Kirschstein, a National Institutes of Health pathologist, died Oct. 6 at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. She was 83. She helped develop and refine tests to ensure the safety of vaccines for polio and measles, organized the NIH response to the AIDS epidemic, and became the first woman appointed director of an NIH institute,

In Saturday's Globe:

While much attention has been paid to steroid use among professional athletes, teenagers are often drawn to sports performance products that advertise similarly dramatic results. The and other supplements are sold with virtually no oversight by the Food and Drug Administration.

Inspectors gave Massachusetts General Hospital high marks during a surprise inspection earlier this year, a sharp difference from a review three years ago that turned up numerous problems at the Harvard teaching hospital.

"Massachusetts may have the best health care in the country, but it doesn’t cover the treatment for the fastest-growing health threat to children - autism," Doug Flutie, a former professional football player and the cofounder of the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism, writes on the opinion page.