An Apple a Day Keeps The Doctor Away

I think if I were to ask people or if you were to ask yourselves what are some of the things that you take for granted i'm we would get a plethora of answers. Anything from our homes, families, freedoms, knowledge of the gospel, schooling, to material things like cell phones, computers, etc. 

Why do we take things for granted? I think it often depends what type of object or thing it is, but it usually is something that we've had for a fair amount of time and has become or is extremely useful.

I have realized as I've entered my field of study here at school that one thing that I take for granted is Medicine. 

For that reason I wanted to explore how written knowledge has aided the progression of medicine and what difference it has made.

If you lived in ancient times and speaking medically, there would have been some places that would have enjoyed residing in and there would have been some you would have wanted to avoid. Th best place you could have lived though according to ancient texts would have been the home of the Nile....Egypt.

Most of the medical texts from Egypt are found in the form of Papyrus dating back to as far as 2000 BC and is some of the oldest documented. You would be quite surprised how much the Egyptians knew when it came to medicine. I honestly had no idea till I started looking and researching. They would treat anything from Dietary deficiencies, to neck injuries, to broken bones, and surgery...Even texts describing prosthetics have been discovered. 

Above is a Prosthetic toe that has been determined to have been worn by a 50 to 60 year old women.

Most of this knowledge comes from a few major finds which were groups of papyri. One of those is the Edwin Smith Papyrus which it is said that they were probably written at about 1600 BC but contains information and medical procedures that could have dated back to as early 3000 BC. These were bought by Edwin Smith who was an american living in Cairo in the 19th century. It is about 17 pages long and is largely based upon the brain but does eventually talk about the neck and arms and a variety of other sicknesses that could be treated.

Now I know this doesn't mean much to you as you can't read it, but this is what as discovered and is part of the Edwin Smith Papyrus. This contain many procedures that tend to be sectioned by parts of the body.

Another large contributor is the Ebers Papyrus which is a very in-depth text. It is 110 pages long and contains information on skin diseases which they broke up into 3 sections even. It also contains a standardized list of prescriptions that were given to cure the ailments encountered.  Below I added a few things that were found and translated from the papyrus.

For the evacuation of the belly:
Cow's milk, 1; .grains, 1; honey 1; mash, sift, cook; take in four portions.

To remedy the bowels:
Melilot (?), 1; dates, 1; cook in oil; anoint sick part.

To refresh an aching head:
Flour, 1; incense, 1; wood of wa, 1; waneb plant, 1; mint (?), 1; horn of a stag, 1; sycamore (?) seeds, 1; seeds of [ (?)], 1; mason's plaster (?), 1; seeds of zart, 1; water, 1; mash, apply to the head.

To renew bowel movements in a constipated child:
An old book, boil in oil, apply half on the belly to reestablish evacuation.

Ebers Papyrus
G. Maspero, Etudes de mythologie et d'achéologie égyptiennes III, 1898, pp.289f.

You might ask why the Egyptians as far as them excelling in medicine? Well as you know, they participated in the ritual of mummification and as those were carried out, little by little more things were discovered and theories were made and succeeded as well as made and failed. They focused on a diagnosis and treatment type of system and that aided to their progression  and understanding.

The fact that we know the extent of how much the Egyptians knew about medicine literally is based upon these findings. So not only was written texts useful for physicians ( which they actually did have real physicians and it was considered a career) so they could remember certain things of the body, but because these texts have been preserved we have learned a ton about the egyptian culture with an extra light on medicinal practices. Physicians still became physicians in egypt by apprenticing with someone already practicing, so there was a large part of the work that was transmitted orally and by simply watching what they would do. However, hopefully you can see the advantages in having these procedures recorded and documented and especially preserved through out time.

So next time you find yourself in the doctors office, take a moment to think how different your experience would be if we didn't have the knowledge we do today...but also think about what type of experience you would have had living in ancient Egypt with their "legendary" and "sought after" physicians.