CHAPTER I The Evolution of Modern Medicine | ||
EGYPTIAN MEDICINE
OUT of the ocean of oblivion, man emerges in history in a highly civilized state on the banks of the Nile, some sixty centuries ago. After millenniums of a gradual upward progress, which can be traced in the records of the stone age, civilization springs forth Minerva-like, complete, and highly developed, in the Nile Valley. In this sheltered, fertile spot, neolithic man first raised himself above his kindred races of the Mediterranean basin, and it is suggested that by the accidental discovery of copper Egypt "forged the instruments
FIG. 2.
[Description: An illustration of the Step Pyramid]
The Step Pyramid.
(Sakkarah.)
that raised civilization out of the slough of the Stone Age" (Elliot Smith). Of special interest to us is the fact that one of the best-known names of this earliest period is that of a physician—guide, philosopher and friend of the king—a man in a position of wide trust and importance. On leaving Cairo, to go up the Nile, one sees on the right in the desert behind Memphis a terraced pyramid 190 feet in height, "the first large structure of stone known in history." It is the royal tomb of Zoser, the first of a long series with which the Egyptian monarchy sought "to adorn the coming bulk of death." The design of this is attributed to Imhotep, the first figure of a physician to stand out clearly from the mists of antiquity. "In priestly wisdom, in magic, in the formulation of wise proverbs, in medicine and architecture, this remarkable figure of Zoser's reign left so notable a reputation that his name was never forgotten, and 2500 years after his death he had become a God of Medicine, in whom the Greeks, who called him Imouthes, recognized their own Æsculapius."[3] He became a popular god, not only healing men when alive, but taking good care of them in the journeys after death. The facts about this medicinæ
FIG. 3.
[Description: An illustration of a statue of Imhotep]
Imhotep.
primus inventor, as he has been called, may be gathered from Kurt Sethe's study. [4] He seems to have corresponded very much to the Greek Asklepios. As a god he is met with comparatively late, between 700 and 332 B. C. Numerous bronze figures of him remain. The oldest memorial mentioning him is a statue of one of his priests, Amasis (No. 14765 in the British Museum). Ptolemy V dedicated to him a temple on the island of Philæ. His cult increased much in later days, and a special temple was dedicated to him near Memphis Sethe suggests that the cult of Imhotep gave the inspiration to the Hermetic literature. The association of Imhotep with the famous temple at Edfu is of special interest.
Egypt became a centre from which civilization spread to the other
In this way it came about that diseases were believed to be due to hostile spirits, or caused by the anger of a god, so that medicines, no matter how powerful, could only be expected to assuage the pain; but magic alone, incantations, spells and prayers, could remove the disease. Experience brought much of the wisdom we call empirical, and the records, extending for thousands of years, show that the Egyptians employed emetics, purgatives, enemata, diuretics, diaphoretics and even bleeding. They had a rich pharmacopœia derived from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. In the later periods, specialism reached a remarkable development, and Herodotus remarks that the country was full of physicians;—"One treats only the diseases of the eye, another those of the head, the teeth, the abdomen, or the internal organs."
Our knowledge of Egyptian medicine is derived largely from the remarkable papyri dealing specially with this subject. Of these, six or seven are of the first importance. The most famous is that discovered by Ebers, dating from about 1500 B. C. A superb document, one of the great treasures of the Leipzig Library, it is 20.23 metres long and 30 centimetres high and in a state of wonderful preservation. Others are the Kahun, Berlin, Hearst and British Museum papyri. All these have now been published— the last three quite recently, edited by Wreszinski.[7] I show here a reproduction from which an idea may be had of these remarkable documents. They are motley collections, filled with incantations, charms,
FIG. 4.
[Description: An image of the Ebers Papyrus]
Beginning of Ebers Papyrus.
One department of Egyptian medicine reached a high stage of development, vis., hygiene. Cleanliness of the dwellings, of the cities and of the person was regulated by law, and the priests set a splendid example in their frequent ablutions, shaving of the entire body, and the spotless cleanliness of their clothing. As Diodorus remarks, so evenly ordered was their whole manner of life that it was as if arranged by a learned physician rather than by a lawgiver.
Two world-wide modes of practice found their earliest illustration in ancient Egypt. Magic, the first of these, represented the attitude of primitive man to nature, and really was his religion. He had no idea of immutable laws, but regarded the world about him as changeable and fickle like himself, and "to make life go as he wished, he must be able to please and propitiate or to coerce these forces outside himself."[8]
The point of interest to us is that in the Pyramid Texts—"the oldest chapter in human thinking preserved to us, the remotest reach in the intellectual history of man which we are now able to discern"[9]— one of their six-fold contents relates to the practice of magic. A deep belief existed as to its efficacy, particularly in guiding the dead, who were said to be glorious by reason of mouths equipped with the charms, prayers and ritual of the Pyramid Texts, armed with which alone could the soul escape the innumerable dangers and ordeals of the passage through another world. Man has never lost his belief in the efficacy of magic, in the widest sense of the term. Only a very few of the most intellectual nations have escaped from its shackles. Nobody else has so clearly expressed the origins and relations of magic
The second world-wide practice which finds its earliest record among the Egyptians is the use secretions and parts of the animal body as medicine. The practice was one of great antiquity with primitive man, but the papyri already mentioned contain the
One formula in everyday use has come to us in a curious way from the Egyptians. In the Osiris myth, the youthful Horus loses an eye in his battle with Set. This eye, the symbol of sacrifice, became, next to the sacred beetle, the most common talisman of the country, and all museums are rich in models of the Horus eye in glass or stone.
"When alchemy or chemistry, which had its cradle in Egypt, and derived its name from Khami, an old title for this country, passed to the hands of the Greeks, and later of the Arabs, this sign passed with it. It was also adopted to some extent by the Gnostics of the early Christian church in Egypt. In a cursive form it is found in mediæval translations of the works of Ptolemy the astrologer, as the sign of the planet Jupiter. As such it was placed upon horoscopes and upon formula containing drugs made for administration to the body, so that the harmful properties of these drugs might be removed under the influence of the lucky planet. At present, in a slightly modified form, it still figures at the top of prescriptions written daily in Great Britain (℞)."[11]
For centuries Egyptian physicians had a great reputation, and in
he reckoned the best skilled physicians in all the world, and he makes the interesting statement that: "Medicine is practiced among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder, and no more: thus the country swarms with medical practitioners, some under taking to cure diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines, and some those which are not local."[12]
A remarkable statement is made by Pliny, in the discussion upon the use of radishes, which are said to cure a "Phthisicke," or ulcer of the lungs—"proofe whereof was found and seen in Ægypt by occasion that the KK. there, caused dead bodies to be cut up, and anatomies to be made, for to search out the maladies whereof men died." [13]
The study of the anatomy of mummies has thrown a very interesting light upon the diseases of the ancient Egyptians, one of the most prevalent of which appears to have been osteo-arthritis. This has been studied by Elliot Smith, Wood Jones, Ruffer and Rietti. The majority
A study of the internal organs has been made by Ruffer, who has shown that arterio-sclerosis with calcification was a common disease 8500 years ago; and he holds that it could not have been associated with hard work or alcohol, for the ancient Egyptians
did not drink spirits, and they had practically the same hours of work as modern Egyptians, with every seventh day free.
K. Sethe: Imhotep, der Asklepios der Aegypter, Leipzig, 1909 (Untersuchungen, etc., ed. Sethe, Vol. II, No. 4).
L. Thorndike: The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe, New York, 1905, p. 29.
The Historie of the World, commonly called the Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus, translated into English by Philemon Holland, Doctor in Physieke, London, 1601, Vol. II, p. 371, Bk. XXX, Chap. I, Sect. 1.
CHAPTER I The Evolution of Modern Medicine | ||