Abstract
MEDICINE AND SURGERY IN ANCIENT EGYPT.—In Science progress, for October, Dr. Warren R. Dawson maintains as the resu1t of a direct study of Egyptian. medical texts that the generally accepted accounts of Egyptian medicine consist of a series of generalisations many of them quite erroneous and based upon incorrect readings which have been copied from book to book for the last fifty years. There are a number of medical papyri in existence, of which the best known is the Ebers. Egyptian medical knowledge was clearly based upon magic, as is shown by the use of incantations by the object of the treatment, as indicated by the form of its title in the papyrus, such as ‘against,’ or ‘to banish,’ or ‘to drive out’ the disease, which was evidently conceived as a possession, and by the fact that even effective remedies were used magically. Some of the remedies were deliberately made disgusting or unpalatable to the possessing spirit. Surgery, however, the recently discovered Edwin Smith papyrus, which deals with the treatment of wounds, shows to have been based upon exact and scientific knowledge. This was due to the practice of mummification which early gave the Egyptians a knowledge of comparative anatomy. The hieroglyphic signs for the organs of the body are pictures of the organs themselves, but the fact that they are animal and not human organs is evidence that the Egyptians were first acquainted with the structure of the lower animals. The practice of mummification again also gave them a knowledge of physiology—the Ebers papyrus contains several sections dealing with the heart and its functions. Although the meaning of the terminology is not always clear, owing to lexicographical difficulties, and drugs, symptoms, and diseases, all alike are obscure at times, several diseases have been identified and the mummies themselves have furnished evidence of certain pathological conditions. Generally speaking, the diseases are those which attack the fellahin to-day,—intestinal troubles due to bad water; worms and other parasites; ophthalmia and other infections of the eyes; boils, bites, skin diseases, bilharzia infection, and mastoid disease among others.
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Research Items. Nature 120, 671–672 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120671a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120671a0