Ancient Egyptian medicine

http://www.algomhuria.net.eg/gazette/3/

"Got any hog's teeth handy? You might need them to cure your indigestion. According to an ancient Egyptian medical text, you need to grind one hog's tooth and add it to a sugar cake mixture. Bye-bye, dyspepsia. You don't have any sugar? Sorry to have troubled you. I'll try the other neighbour.The ancient Egyptians knew a thing or two about medicine. For instance, if you have a touch of diarrhoea, mix figs, grapes, bread dough, corn, elderberries and some fresh earth (!). At least you know where the ingredients have been. Do you know the constituents of those pills from your local friendly pharmacist? Even if you read the list of ingredients, do you know what benzodr-whatever-it-is-polyphosphate is? But a lump of earth is a lump of earth, and that is sure to bung you up for a while. If you burnt yourself in ancient times and were in agony, your physician would have followed the following procedure: 'Create a mixture of milk of a woman who has borne a male child, gum, and, ram's hair. While administering this mixture say: 'Thy son Horus is burnt in the desert. Is there any water there? There is no water. I have water in my mouth and a Nile between my thighs. I have come to extinguish the fire.' Lesions of the skin? No problem.' After the scab has fallen off put on it, take a scribe's excrement (sic), mix in fresh milk and apply as a poultice.' The Greek historian Herodotus remarked on how healthy the Egyptian people were.

Diodorus of Sicily wrote that doctors prescribed treatments according to rigid, time-honoured written precepts. If a patient died, Diodorus wrote, the physician would not be blamed if he had followed the rules to the letter.If he deviated from the text, he would join the patient in the next life, he said. One papyrus text consists of two chapters on how the physician can protect himself from his patients' ailments, otherwise it's 'Physician, heal thyself'. A diseased doctor is no use to anyone, except to another doctor.

The third chapter is devoted to the demons that may afflict the patient.The gods come to the rescue. Horus is the physician's protector. It is said that the 'R' at the top of doctor's prescription forms is a shorthand form of the eye of Horus, and not the abbreviation of the Latin Recipe (take). The ibis-headed god Thoth helped the physician with the medical texts. He would come in pretty handy now for deciphering the prescriptions issued by today's doctors. Isis, an expert at recovering body parts and putting them back together, is also on hand. Sekhmet was the one to watch out for. She had to be appeased because she is the harbinger of death. But when she was not leading spirits off to the Afterlife, she was a dab-hand at gynaecology. Trouble having a child? The doctor could commune with Min for fertility purposes. When the little one is ready to come out, an appropriate libation for Thueris was the ticket to ease the pangs of childbirth and to ensure the survival of mother and baby. In the event of an epidemic, Seth would need an offering or two. The incantation by the physician was essential for the success of the cure."

See the above URL for the rest of the article, which also looks briefly at modern health care issues.

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