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EGYPTIANS, NOT GREEKS WERE TRUE FATHERS OF MEDICINE

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Bianca
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« on: June 01, 2007, 10:09:52 am »




                        ANATOMICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANCIENT EGYPT





"I lead your head out, I set your neck up."

Papyrus “Ebers” 1)(Egyptian medical compendium)

To be able to portray aspects related to body-structure and movement, an artist needs either an understanding of anatomy or body awareness, or optimally, an appreciation of both. Body awareness was highly developed in ancient Egypt - but what was the situation with respect to understanding physiology?

Approximately a dozen papyrii within the field of ancient Egyptian medicine have survived and act today as our primary source. These texts were written between 2000 and 1200 B.C. Some templates of these writings do, however, go as far back as 2500 B.C.


OLDEST KNOWN APOTHECARY JAR
It contained traces of Ashish - The face is of the Pygmy God Bes
who became an Egyptian God of Medicine


Around 200 B.C., Flavius Clemens Alexandrinus, founder of a Christian school in Alexandria, reported six complete Egyptian medical books, in which the subject was systematically handled, one of which was “about the construction of the body”. According to Flavius, these six books were part of a series of 42 holy books, which have been ascribed to Thoth (Hermes Trismegistos). According to handed down tradition of the Egyptians, Thoth brought the art of writing, the subject of space as well as the art of healing to Egypt. Sadly, the 42 Hermetic Books have been lost.

The surviving medical texts are not textbooks as we understand them today but rather descriptions of cases and instructions for treatment. A few technical and philological commentaries exist regarding pathological terms describing the position or normal functioning of certain organs or parts of the body. The descriptions we find here about vessels and the role of various organs are partly correct, partly diffuse or speculative and some are wrong.

Whilst making this assessment, following points should, however, be considered: firstly, the Egyptian meaning is exceptionally difficult to translate. Secondly, some terms are ambiguous. One word is, for example, used for muscles as well as tendons, veins or nerves. Another word is used for both “body” and “flesh”. A final point being that it is not possible to distinguish to what extent the physical is fused with the spiritual in a symbolic or analogous manner.

In the papyrus “Ebers” - named after the man who obtained this text in Egypt 1873 - we find, for example, the heart referred to as the “seat of thinking”. This does not automatically imply that the Egyptians were here referring to intellectual thinking. Rather it is feasable that they were implying a spiritual function, a relationship between the spiritual and physical levels.

Leaving this difficulty of interpretation of terms, I want to outline now what is remarkable in the papyrii regarding anatomy and physio-logy of movement.

Distinctions between skin, flesh, bone, bone marrow, tendons and ligaments were made. 2) Interestingly, they also mentioned “skin of leather”-layers. Knowing the context, one must assume that this was a referral to layers of connective tissue. The sutures of the skull are described as “leatherlike”. The ancient Egyptians apparently knew that the sutures of children and adults are attached to each other by connective tissue and are not fully ossified. 3) The amount of vertebrae and the existence of the spinal canal were known to them, they mentioned seven cervical vertebrae, for example. 4)

Interestingly, a predominant model of interpretation in the medicine of ancient Egypt understood health as a streaming of the body’s liquids. This streaming was supposed to be aperient and responsible for supply. Health was only possible, if the fluids and substances could flow unrestrained throughout the body. This intuitive concept appears as quite modern. Since today’s research on connective tissue and its ground substance - responsible for the free flow of nutritional subtances, antibodies, information etc. - points in the same direction. 5)

Up to the present, it is still being discussed as to whether anatomical knowledge was gained during the embalming of corpses for mummification. Whilst this cannot be verified on the one hand (sufficient detailed anatomical knowledge in existing papyrii has not been found), we know on the other hand that male and female medical doctors were trained in facilities called the “House of Life”, where embalmers worked. With this fact in mind, it is hard to imagine that no knowledge was gained through studying corpses being opened prior to mummification. It is not known whether religious tabus forbade dissections as performed today.

The methods that were applied in ancient Egypt during a medical examination reveal that they had considerable experience with respect to healthy or pathological physiology. When an ill person was examined, palpation was included, the pulse was taken, odour was noted and other tests were undertaken related to functions of the body.

The following examples are from the papyrus “Edwin Smith” (Old Kingdom) 6): In one case where a dislocation of a cervical vertebra was suspected, the doctor asked the patient to look down at his chest and at his shoulders. The reaction of the patient determined the diagnosis. If the patient was able to move his head to the left and right as well as downwards, even if painful, a strain was diagnosed. If the patient was unable to move the head, a bony dysfunction was diagnosed.

The same functional test was carried out for head injuries causing a stiffness of the neck. The doctor asked the patient to raise his face to find out whether s/he was able to extend the neck, e.g. to bend the neck backwards, and to open his mouth in order to discover whether this was painful.

Sometimes a patient was asked to walk several steps so that observations could be made. In one case of a man with a fractured skull, a doctor recorded that the patient dragged his foot on the same side as his head injury, which indeed is typical for this condition.

In a case where a spinal injury was suspected the doctor asked the patient: “Extend both legs and bend them again.” We know that, if this kind of injury is present, the patient immediately bends the legs when he tries to extend them, because of the pain incurred in the injured vertebra. We find evidence that the doctors knew that the extremities of a patient are without feeling if a cervical vertebra has been dislocated and that in such cases the **** is erect and secretes sperm or urine.


 
Fig. 1 Setting of the shoulder after a work accident (New Kingdom)

Broken bones were realigned and joints which had been dislocated put back into joint (Fig. 1). As an example of the latter, I would like to quote an instruction found in the papyrus Edwin Smith: “If you examine a man with a shifted lower jaw (= luxation, HGB) and you find his mouth open, so that he is unable to close his mouth, then you should put the forefingers on the ends of the lower jaw inside of his mouth and put your thumb under his chin. Then let the dislocated joints fall together to come to their appropriate place again.” 7) In this way, the adjusting maipulation of the jaw was accomplished.

Surgery, even skull openings, took place as early as during the first dynasties. Cool

We find frequent mention of massages in the medical papyrii, in particular for patients with rheumatism, stiff neck muscles 9) or tense muscles around the jaw.

The ancient Egyptians must have had a knowledge of subtle functions of the body. We may conclude this from the frequent portrayal of right-angled joint positions in figurative art. Johannes Ludwig Schmitt (M.D.), a leading German specialist on respiration is quoted here on this aspect: “This special posture indicates an increase in tonicity and of the stimulating effect on breathing. This is initiated via the impulses for the control of breathing caused by a joint position via receptors which respond to mechanical impulses.” 10)

The Egyptians apparently were also aware of the connection be-tween the tonus of the pelvic floor and the position of the uterus. As we know, the tonus of the pelvic floor muscles decreases when giving birth letting the uterus sink (Fig. 2). In the Ebers papyrus we find the recommendation for women after giving birth for the application of steam infusions of a certain substance to restore a healthy tonicity so that the uterus “shall return to its own place”. 11)


 
Fig. 2 A woman giving birth (1350 B.C.)

Summarizing, the medical papyrii alone do not allow us to conclude that the Egyptians had an extensive rational and intellectual knowledge about body-structure as we have today.

Here we must, however, remember that the medical literature that has survived represents only a fraction of its original size. The lost Hermetic books I mentioned above and the works of the medical healer Imhotep have never been found. Interestingly, both the ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates and the Roman scholar Galen reported having seen Imhotep’s works in a temple in Memphis, Egypt. 12) A further example of works from this sphere of knowledge are the anatomy books of Pharao Sachti from the first dynasty which were mentioned by the priest Manetho who lived in the third century B.C. Manetho also refers to Sachti as having been a great healer. 13)

Another source of hesitancy when we regard the sources of our present information must be the fact that a great deal of medical knowledge in this culture was transmitted exclusively by word of mouth as part of the secret teachings. Doctors were usually also priests and the priesthood had a hierarchical structure. At the head was a small circle of initiated persons, who passed on their knowledge only to other initiated persons. This method was especially true for those parts of the knowledge which were only comprehensible to people with an advanced consciousness. The surviving papyrii probably represent practical instructions for “ordinary” doctors, whose state of consciousness was similar to the average consciousness of the people.

Thinking “scientifically” in today’s sense was not substantial for the growth of knowledge in ancient Egypt. Spiritual higher sight and intuition as well as practical experience played a far greater role in the art of healing than the occasional rudiments of empirical science (as familiar to us), which was also practised. 14) It is not without reason that the Egyptians repeatedly pointed out that their knowledge had a primordial and divine origin. 15)

In order to comprehend the kind of knowledge of the ancient Egyptians and how it found its way into their art, it is necessary to try to understand the prevelant consciousness and perception in ancient Egypt. This shall be done in the following chapters.

       Notes

Translation by H. Joachim, Berlin 1978, p. 88 (back to the text)
Cartilage and bone are not exactly conceptually distinguished. (back to the text)
Only at the end of the 19th century, the American M.D. and osteopath William Sutherland rediscovered this. To this day, the large majority of the orthodox medical practitioners still assume that the skull is completely ossified in adults. (back to the text)
H. Grapow, Über die anatomischen Kenntnisse der alten Ägypter, Leipzig 1935 (back to the text)
See among others: Pischinger, Alfred: Matrix & Matrix Regulation. Basis for a Holistic Theory in Medicine, 1991 (back to the text)
This papyrus from the time between 2500 and 2000 B.C. was a real textbook of surgery and of medicine for the bones. Quoted from: Henry E. Sigerist, Der Arzt in der ägyptischen Kultur, Zurich 1963, pp. 99-100 (back to the text)
Papyrus Edwin Smith, translated by Wolfgang Westendorf, Stuttgart 1966 (back to the text)
Dr. W.M. Pahl of the Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics (Department Radiology of the university of Tübingen, Germany) made a radiography of a skull in Assuan and discovered: “The lesion in the frontal region is through-shaped and smoothly defined. The internal table is intact. According to differential diagnosis, is to be assumed that the cause of the defect is either pathological (for example of inflammatory genesis) or, more probably, an intentional surgical operation... In the latter case, the operation would have been performed intra vitam. The patient survived the procedure.” See also: E. Brunner-Traut, Die alten Ägypter, Stuttgart 1981, p. 160 (back to the text)
H. Grapow, Kranker, Krankheiten und Arzt in Ägypten, Berlin 1956, pp. 84, 118 and 130 (back to the text)
Johannes Ludwig Schmitt, Atemheilkunst, Bern 1981, p. 529 and pp. 580 (back to the text)
Papyrus Ebers, translated by H. Joachim, Berlin 1973, p. 171 A chair without seat disk was used for this, under which the essences were heated up in a small pan on glowing coals. From there the steam ascended to the pelvic floor. (back to the text)
E. Brunner-Traut, Die alten Ägypter, Stuttgart 1974, p. 145 (back to the text)
Joachim Spiegel, Das Werden der altägyptischen Hochkultur, Heidelberg 1953, pp. 291 (back to the text)
These conditions have been unsufficiently considered in the fields of egyptology and of history of medical science. Most of their representatives persistently ignore that the present predominant materialistic kind of science is only one of several variations of past and present kinds of science. Therefore the majority of school scientists are only interested in such fragments of past time ideas which are congruent with the premises of modern Western science. Logically those fragments are judged by standards of modern school medicine and interpreted prejudiced according to the own ideology of science. A typical example is the statement of Julia Budka: “Mentally ill people…were called ‘people being in a god’s hand’, what clarifies, how many difficulties one (the ancient Egyptians, HGB) had to find natural causes (for mental deseases, HGB).” (Julia Budka, Heilkunst und Zauberei - Medizin im alten Ägypten, in: Kemet 4/2000) In this statement it is not even taken into consideration, that perhaps in ancient Egypt (like in many other spiritually oriented cultures too) “mental desease” was regarded to be an altered state of consciousness, different from normal, but not necessary “diseased”.
See also:

Paul Feyerabend, Wider den Methodenzwang, ibid, esp. pp. 55-70 and 238-284

S. Morenz, Die Begegnung Europas mit Ägypten, Zurich 1969, p. 211

H. Grapow, Kranker, Krankheiten und Arzt, Berlin 1956, p. 96 and 133

Sigismund von Gleich, Vom Weltentraum zum Erdenleben. Babylonien und Ägypten, Stuttgart 1938, pp. 70 (back to the text)

Rudolf Steiner said that the initiated of ancient Egypt had a “cosmic knowledge about the organs” and that they had knowledge of the nervous system. He is even convinced that in a certain sense the wise priests of those times were superior to today’s doctors. This assessment will become more understandable when we discuss the Egyptian state of consciousness in the next chapter. This consciousness was the foundation of spiritual ways of healing (for example the healing sleep inside a temple), or homoeopathic like healing (remedies using the principle of similarity) and other modalities of medicine. See: Rudolf Steiner, Ägyptische Mythen und Mysterien, Dornach 1978
« Last Edit: June 01, 2007, 12:40:38 pm by Bianca2001 » Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
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