I really enjoyed the post by Kody on medicine. I learned quite a bit from it. For my post I have decided to branch off a little from his topic and talk about one of my favorite subjects: veterinary medicine. I am a biology major and I want to be veterinarian.
Treatment of animals in ancient Epgyt.
Veterinary medicine has been around for a long as humans and animals have been together. The first documentation known for recipes to cure animal illnesses is in 2500 B.C in China. Some 4,000 years old Indian art show men caring for horses and elephants. The Ancient Egyptian art shows how men checking the health of their cattle and dogs.
It is interesting to see the change in veterinary medicine over history. Back then, animals that were cared for were farm animals cattle, sheep, horses etc. The latin root for veterinarian is veterinae, which means "cattle". Now, at least in U.S. most animals treated are pets.
Though it is not known exactly when published a Roman scholar named Columella wrote 12 volumes on the topic of animals and agriculture. He wrote about breeding, livestock health, and animal care and treatment. Columella was the first to use the "veterianarius" to describe a doctor who treats animals.
The Egyptian Papyrus of Kahun (1900 BCE) and Vedic literature in ancient India offer one of the first written records of veterinary medicine. Veterinary medicine really does have a place in the history of written knowledge-- we talked in class about how remedies were written down and lived by even if they were ineffective or even harmful. The therapeutic techniques written in the Papyrus of Kahun show us that Egyptian healers combined medical and religious roles by being "priest healers"-- they often worked in tempIes. Here is just an exerpt: "Treatment for the eyes (?) of a bull with the wind (cold ?)
ReplyDeleteIf I see [a bull with] wind, he is with his eyes running, his
forehead ? uden (wrinkled ?) the roots (gums ?) of his teeth red, his
neck swollen (or raised ?): repeat the incantation for him. Let him be
laid on his side, let him be sprinkled with cold water, let his eyes
and his hoofs (?) and all his body be rubbed with gourds (?) or
melons, let him be fumigated with gourds ......... wait herdsman
................ be soaked .............. that it draws in soaking
........... until it dissolves into water: let him be rubbed with
gourds of cucumbers. Thou shalt gash (?) him upon his nose and his
tail, thou shalt say as to it, "he that has a cut either dies with it
or lives with it." If he does not recover and he is wrinkled (?) under
thy fingers, and blinks (?) his eyes, thou shalt bandage his eyes with
linen lighted with fire to stop the running."
I wonder if you did ancient animal medical cures on animals now, if it would be considered animal cruelty. Probably. It seems to me from what I hear now (and I'm not an expert, definitely), veterinary medicine is like human medicine in a lot of ways, and costs almost as much. I wonder how animal medicine compared to human medicine in ancient times. I wonder if humans and animals were seen as different enough they would have used completely different cures, or if they were at all similar.
ReplyDeleteYeah there is definitely lots of records of this type of medicine, seems like most of it was for cattle like you said because they played such a big part in society as far as wealth and food and all of the necessary things.
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