Egyptian Doctors in 1300 BC

Egyptian Doctors in 1300 BC
Egyptian doctors were well aware of their limitations, however and were told not to inflict unnecessary suffering on their patients, so there were many cases where they had to say – at least to themselves –‘An aliment not to be treated’.

They were recommended to take note of the treatments and medicine they used and of their effects, so that they had a record for similar cases in the future.

There were medicine to be taken internally, others to be applied to the outside of the body, and others still to be inhaled. Egyptians ingredients that can be identified today appear to be sound herbal remedies.

However some medicines had ingredients such as mice, beetles and dung which aimed o drive out the demons causing the illness.

The Egyptians had a remarkable knowledge of the way the body worked, and knew about its internal arrangement through mummifying the dead.

To them the heart was the most important organ; they knew that it pumped blood round the body and that the pulse ‘spoke the messages of the heart’. They also knew that injuries to one side of the brain affected the opposite side of the body.

Doctors sometime used surgery as well as medicine to treat patients and opened injured skulls to relieve pressure in the brain.

Before an operation the surgeon gave his patient a drink, presumably a painkiller, ‘to render it agreeable’. In the New Kingdom the painkiller might have been opium, imported from Cyprus.

Because of the importance the Egyptians attached to ritual purity the surgeon and his assistants washed themselves and purified the instruments in fire before the operation. Both of these would cut down the risk of infection.

The Egyptians were a deeply religious people and prayers would always be used as well as medicines, even for the simplest ailments.

In difficult cases, magic might be employed. It was also possible to visit the temple of a deity associated with medicine, such as Imhotep, which had priests trained as doctors.

At some temples the sick could spend a night close to the god’s sanctuary. During such a stay, called ‘incubation’, the patient might be cured by the deity, or dream of the god and receive instructions for treatment.

Even if no help was forthcoming, the sufferer was spirituality comforted.
Egyptian Doctors in 1300 BC