In its beginnings, Egyptian medicine was mystical and priestly. Later, the Egyptian people’s contact with nature and their love of technique led them to apply their physicochemical knowledge to medicine. They no longer sought a magical interpretation of symptoms, but instead saw in them the sign of a specific disease.
The historical sources of Egyptian medicine are a group of medical papyri, mainly three: the Ebers Papyrus, the Brugsch Papyrus and the Smith Papyrus. The latter, discovered by Edwin Smith, is the most complete surgical treatise of the ancient world. It dates from 1700 B.C., but it is a copy of a much older text, written around 3000 B.C.
All cases are treated in the same way: they begin with the examination of the patient, followed by the diagnosis, the prognosis and, finally, the treatment. The text does not mention magical means of healing, but repeatedly refers to the art of the physician, which indicates that medical schools existed and trained surgeons independently of the priestly castes.
The Ebers Papyrus contains nearly one thousand prescriptions. The most commonly used remedies were yeast and oil.
The hygienic legislation is also worthy of mention. The life of the Egyptians was regulated by special laws issued as religious prescriptions. The practice of medicine was governed by particular provisions. According to Herodotus, Egyptian medicine was divided in such a way that each physician treated only one disease. Diodorus Siculus states that, during war, the sick were treated free of charge, since physicians received compensation from the state.
With Egypt’s submission to Persian rule, medicine declined and came to be practiced by charlatans. Nevertheless, the essential ideas of the Egyptians about medicine were transmitted to the Greeks.
Medicine in Israel
The medical thought of the Eastern world, particularly that of the Mediterranean and Egypt, passed into Israel, where it was filtered and developed according to the monotheistic conception. For this reason, it was said that only God possessed the great function of healing, since illnesses came from God and were interpreted as punishments for sins.
Medicine was therefore practiced by priests, who, as intermediaries of the divine will, had the power to heal. Since it was impossible to imagine the existence of a healthy soul in a sick body, extraordinary importance was given to hygienic practices, accompanied by a strong sense of mysticism.
Thus arose circumcision, the prohibition against eating certain foods, ablutions for guests, bathing before entering the temple and the hygiene of women during the menstrual period.
Persian and Indian Medicine
Both Persian medicine and Indian medicine appear to have been connected, at least in their origins, with Mesopotamian medicine. The foundations of Persian medicine are found in the books of the Avesta, which describe the purification rituals required to drive away evil spirits, considered the origin of all illnesses.
Invocation of the gods, faith, rites and the reading of sacred texts formed the basis of healing, which shows that they had a magical conception of the etiology of diseases.
Like all Eastern medicine, Indian medicine was first empirical and later priestly. While priests kept their medical practices enclosed within magical formulas, practical medicine acquired great importance and development, giving rise to a pathology based on the disharmony of three humors: spirit, bile and phlegm, regarded as constituents of the vital part of the organism.
Medical texts are characterized by their precision, their exact systematic construction, the importance assigned to medical examination and thorough diagnosis. A very important aspect was the development of surgery, whose knowledge is contained in the Book of Susruta. The level reached by Indian surgery places the medicine of India on a higher plane than Hippocratic medicine.
Chinese Medicine
According to tradition, Chinese medicine was founded by Emperor Shen Nung, who in 2800 B.C. is said to have compiled a book mentioning one hundred remedies. Chinese pathology derived from the conception of the existence of two principles: Yang and Yin. The disharmony between them caused disease.
Diagnosis, dominated by the theory of the pulse, came to distinguish two hundred different types. The most important part of the Chinese legacy is its pharmacopoeia, which by the 16th century consisted of 56 volumes detailing 2,000 medicines.
