ANCIENT EGYPT MEDICINE

The Egyptian people made several major medical discoveries and began treating diseases in a physical manner alongside older spiritual cures. The Egyptians did not perform main surgery as conducted, today they made relevant developments in surgical knowledge and practice, those was a side effect of religious ceremonies the effect on public health.

The ancient Egypt civilization have a method to embalming important people dead an example of this is the pharaoh; they get good knowledge of the anatomy of the head and brain. They obtained a good data of the meninges, the cerebrospinal fluid, and the twitches and pulsations, and were aware that the brain was the seat of the body control. Respect of the clinical examination, the process of examination follows in the same steps we follow in our modern medical practice. Interrogation of the patient as a first step, after that they palpation the percussion of the body and diseased organs, palpation of the pulse, were those of the abdomen, fractures and tumours; Finally they described with general accuracy the larger bones and viscera, and recognized the function of the heart as the driving power of the organism and the center of the circulatory system

The human body was believed to be born in a healthy state, and could not fall ill or die except through the influence of a foreign agent. In case of wounds or intestinal worms, that agent was visible and the treatment prescribed was hence rational. As they were not aware of microbiology, internal diseases were thought to be due to an occult force attributed to evil gods, a divine punishment or magical procedures. However, in the cultural life of ancient Egypt, among the people amulets were more popular than pills as preventive or curative of disease; those was to them a possession by devils, and had to be treated with incantations. A cold for instance, could be exorcised by such magic words; the magic and religion were part of everyday life in ancient Egypt. Goods and demons were thought to be responsible for many ailments, so often the treatments involved a supernatural element. Often, the first recourse was an appeal to a deity. Frequently priets and magicians were called on to treat disease instead of, or in addition to, a physician.

To sum up, The Egyptians civilization has a favourable idea of the medicine, anatomy, and physiology of humanity, and of the scientific outlook that they obtained at least two thousand years before Hippocrates. Medical knowledge in ancient Egypt had an excellent reputation, and rulers of other empires would ask the Egyptian pharaoh to send them their best physician to treat their loved ones. Egyptians had some knowledge of human anatomy, even though they never dissected the body only in the mummification of dead bodies of men and animals, which had been practiced from time immemorial, might have taught them many things.

BY PAULA LOPEZ NOVOA