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EGYPTIANS, NOT GREEKS WERE TRUE FATHERS OF MEDICINE

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Rebecca
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« Reply #30 on: December 22, 2007, 02:36:33 am »

What the doctor ordered

Although often prefaced by a prayer or spell, each prescription provides all the information needed to reproduce the remedy, from its ingredients and method of preparation right down to the dose. They follow a standard format, listing the active ingredient first, followed by stabilisers, flavourings to mask unpleasant tastes, perhaps a soothing agent to help it down and sometimes secondary drugs to alleviate the side effects of the principal drug. Last of all comes the medium, or "vehicle", in which everything is mixed.

Focusing on four key papyri, which contain 1000 prescriptions and date from 1850 BC to around 1200 BC, Campbell analysed each prescription and compared it with contemporary standards and protocols. "I looked at the source of the drug and the formulation: was it a cream or an enema or a draught and so on. Then I looked at the preparation: would the active drug have been extracted appropriately? And then, could it have worked? Was the drug given the right way and in a suitable dose?" Several plants named in previous translations, such as cinnamon and aniseed, would not have worked in the ancient remedies and there is no evidence that they existed in Egypt at the time. Other plants existed but had been wrongly translated. "Some were obviously so right while others seemed improbable," says Campbell.

After five years of painstaking analyses, she had compiled an ancient Egyptian pharmacopoeia listing all of the drugs in the papyri, their sources and how they were used. She had confirmed or come up with more plausible identifications for 284 ingredients - various parts of 134 species of plants, 24 animals and 28 minerals. Of the original 1000 prescriptions, she could now say exactly how 550 were made and whether they would work. For another 156, she knew all but a minor ingredient - enough to say if the remedy worked. That left 234 with unknown ingredients and 27 for which the prescription failed to identify what the drug was intended for. "We've got some of the mystery ingredients down to half a dozen possibilities. Others we'll never identify," says Campbell.

The Egyptians' choice of ingredients has certainly stood the test of time. When Campbell consulted Martindale's Extra Pharmacopoeia - the 1977 edition, when drugs were still prepared in a dispensary - she found that 62 per cent of ingredients named in the papyri were still in use in the 1970s. Many still are - or at least synthetic versions of them.

When preparing their remedies, the Egyptians used techniques familiar to modern pharmacists. They knew when to concentrate a drug by boiling, when to dilute it and when grinding released more of the active ingredient. They were expert in extracting drugs from plants, steeping them in either water or alcohol depending on the solubility of the active compound. "Colocynth (bitter apple), for instance, can only be extracted in mild alcohol and it always was - in either beer or wine," says Campbell. Some preparations required a two-stage extraction - first in water or alcohol and then in acid - achieved by steeping in vinegary wine or soured milk, which produces butyric acid. Most remedies were made up as required, but if they had to last longer they were preserved in sugar or alcohol. "I didn't find one drug that wasn't prepared properly," Campbell says. "I have no evidence that they were aware of the chemistry of their actions, but fortuitously or otherwise, they adopted the right techniques."

The formulations stood comparison too. Checking against the 1973 British Pharmaceutical Codex, which lays down standards and protocols for making up medicines, Campbell found 67 per cent of the ancient Egyptian remedies complied, with one proviso - the Egyptians knew nothing of the need for sterility. Apart from drugs given by injection, they dispensed all the same types of medicines as we do. They had enemas, draughts and linctuses, lotions and liniments, creams, ointments and mouthwashes. They had eye drops (to be dripped through a bird's quill), pills, powders and poultices and, for gynaecological conditions, pessaries. For nasal congestion, doctors prescribed remedies to be inhaled (pour onto hot stones and breathe through a hollow reed). They were particularly adept at preparing suppositories, mixing the drug into a heavy grease and then rolling this into a pellet firm enough for insertion but which would melt at body temperature.
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