Have a cold? Take a pill. Have a headache? Take a pill. Have asthma? Here is an inhaler. Ah! The wonders of modern medicine; all you need to cure a common ailment is conveniently made and packaged for your easy use.
Of course, it took us thousands of years to reach where we are now; medicine, as everything else, had humble beginnings. With the advancement of medical care and research, what baffled our ancestors in the days of yore, can be logically explained today. So let us travel back in time, and have a little peek at medicine in the times of the Pharaohs.
Ancient Egyptians were among the first people to establish the medical profession. We may view their practices as basic; at the time however, they were revolutionary. The medical field was allowed to develop because the economy was an agrarian one; people lived and worked in the same place their whole lives, therefore advancement was easy to maintain. Not only that, they could also read and write; medical knowledge was therefore preserved and added to as time went by and more discoveries and observations were made.
One of the most important things for Ancient Egyptians was cleanliness; they knew that to decrease the risk of catching something, the best way was prevention, and to them that meant great care of personal hygiene. Not only did they believe in the importance of bathing and purifying their bodies habitually, but they also made sure that they ate a diet where unhealthy or unclean animals were avoided.
Beyond making the link of having a good diet and a well maintained hygiene to being healthy, physicians had an understanding of how the body functioned. They knew that the body had a pulse and that it was linked to the heart; their knowledge however, did not expand to the fact that blood circulated around the body. They had another theory; that of channels.
They believed that there were various channels that carried air, water, and blood. This idea came from their observations of farmers who dug out irrigation channels for their crops. Seeing how these supplied the land with the nourishment it needed, they made an analogy that the human body also has channels that are far reaching inside the body, and provide it with all its needs. It was believed that the heart was the center of the channels.
The Ancient Egyptians thought the gods were the creators and controllers of life. They believed in different gods who controlled one’s health. If there was a blockage in one of the channels, they thought it was the result of the evil doings of Wehedu, an evil spirit.
The channel theory allowed medicine to move from entirely relying on spiritual cures for diseases and disorders, to realizing that medicine is a more scientific field; when a channel was blocked, remedies were tried in order to unblock it. Medicine was still strongly grounded in the spiritual realm, but this was the first step towards it stepping outside that realm.
As they knew how to write, Ancient Egyptians were able to preserve their knowledge in written form on papyrus sheets; some were later discovered and have given us an idea of their knowledge at the time. The Ebers papyrus is one of these documents, and is thought to have been written around 1500 BCE.
Most probably it includes information that has been re-transcribed from materials dating back to 3400 BCE; this shows how far back the field of medicine goes back to. This scroll is 20 meters long, which translates to about 100 pages; it is one of the oldest preserved medical documents in existence.
Befitting its length, the Ebers papyrus has over 700 remedies, herbal and magical formulae, as well as numerous incantations and spells aimed at repelling evil spirits that cause disease. Included are information about skin problems, dental problems, diseases related to the eyes, intestinal disease, parasites, and how to surgically treat an abscess or a tumor.
Ancient Egyptians also knew how to set broken bones and dislocated joints. Surgeries that went deep inside the body were not performed, but they performed surgery on surface wounds, and could perform sutures well.
Hesy-Ra (2700 BCE) is the earliest ever recorded physician. He was known as “Chief of Dentists and Doctors” to King Djoser. A pioneer female doctor is believed to be Peseshet (2400 BCE), and was known as the supervisor of all female doctors. At the time, the top doctors worked in the Royal Court; below them were inspectors who would supervise the proper actions of doctors.
Ancient Egyptians were so well known for their advanced medicine at the time that people would travel from far in order to receive treatment there. Other rulers would also ask for Egyptian physicians to be sent to them in order to heal them, which shows the respect and reverence they were perceived with and which were justly earned at that.
References
http://www.ancient.eu.com/article/50/
http://www.civilisations.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/egypt/egcs05e.shtml
Cover image by Freepik