Medicine in the Ancient World: Origins of Healthcare

Introduction

The introduction of medicine and primitive healthcare strategies in the ancient world represents one of the most significant steps ever taken to improve human life. Much has changed in the centuries since ancient medicine was first practiced, but it is both interesting and instructive to look back at the beginnings of what we now recognize as modern medicine.

Acupuncture: A Stone Age Practice With Modern Relevance

An article in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine highlights how remarkable it is that a procedure created in the Stone or Bronze Age — acupuncture — remains a highly respected and popular medical practice today. As Wolfson (2003) asks: could anything serious really have been created in a primitive civilization that has anything in common with medicine based on modern physics, chemistry, genetics, and molecular biology? (p. 984).

Wolfson answers his own question on the same page: it may be that Chinese medicine, refined over many years of development, has offered modern science "a good cognition of the human organism." Historical records show that acupuncture was first mentioned around 600 BC, though the initial mention of iron dates to 500 BC. This suggests that the earliest acupuncture needles were likely made of copper, gold, or silver — metals available to humans in small quantities during the Shang era (1520–1030 BC), as Wolfson explains.

Further supporting the historical validity of acupuncture is the fact that the Yellow Emperor's Classics of Internal Medicine — the original manual for acupuncture practice, written in the 4th century BC — is still referenced today. Wolfson notes that this text is written as a conversation between Huang Di (the Yellow Emperor) and his ministers. The first section, "Simple Questions," takes a philosophical approach to medical issues, while the second volume, "Spiritual Pivot" (Ling Shu), addresses fundamental channels and acupuncture points and describes specific acupuncture techniques (p. 984).

The actual application of acupuncture is based on channels in the body — the sites where needles are inserted — which ancient Chinese practitioners are believed to have discovered through meditation or the practice of sexual cultivation, which was said to open an "inward vision" (Wolfson, p. 987). Although some question whether acupuncture could truly have been developed in ancient times, given that even contemporary science has not fully explained the energy channel system, there is ample evidence that the channel system exists.

The First Pharmacists: Ancient Egyptian Medicine

As Nutton (2004) reminds us: "The survival of ancient medical literature depended on two related factors: the copying and recopying over the centuries of such writings, and the continued existence of individuals and institutions both interested in them and in an economic position to buy and preserve them" (p. 4). Ancient medical literature also depended on the ability to translate languages that had long since ceased to be spoken.

Textbooks often teach students that science-based medicine and effective pharmacy began with the Greeks. In the 5th century BC, Hippocrates did introduce rational medicine based on diagnosis and a reasoned approach to treatment. The so-called "father of pharmacy," Claudius Galenus, was also Greek — known to have served as a surgeon to gladiators in Rome in the 2nd century AD (Pain, 2007, p. 40). However, journalist Stephanie Pain challenges the assumption that medicine began with Greece.

The Egyptians practiced some forms of medicine long before the Greeks, though much of it was historically dismissed as fanciful and dominated by magic. According to Jackie Campbell of the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, had it not been for the difficulty of translating ancient Egyptian languages into modern ones, it might have been established long ago that the Egyptians possessed pharmaceutical knowledge well before the Greeks. The key to unlocking what the Egyptians knew — and when — was developing a translation of the written texts found on papyrus, written in a language that had vanished (Pain, p. 40).

Those papyri contain some 2,000 prescriptions, but identifying them precisely has not always been possible, and some of that ancient pharmaceutical knowledge was long thought lost. Translators in the 1890s attempted to decode the entries by cross-referencing drugs known at that time, while later scholars in the 1950s repeated the process using the pharmacological knowledge of their own era. As a result, roughly 30 percent of the ingredients listed in the papyri were disputed between one era of translation and another (Pain, p. 41).

Campbell, acknowledging she is not a linguist, turned to science to authenticate the prescriptions. Her first check was whether a plant named in a prescription actually grew in — or was traded with — Egypt at the time the papyri were written. If it was not, she could rule it out (Pain, p. 41). This approach was aided by the fact that the flora of ancient Egypt is well documented: thousands of botanical specimens have been collected from archaeological sites and museums, many of them accurately dated. Pollen grains extracted from mud bricks or recovered through deep soil core samples have also allowed archaeobotanists to reconstruct Egypt's past flora in enough detail to distinguish indigenous plants from traded ones (Pain, p. 41).

The key to unlocking the mystery turned out to be the ancient recipes themselves. After five years of careful analysis, Campbell was able to catalogue all the drugs in the papyri, their sources, and how they were used (Pain, p. 42). The picture of ancient Egyptian medicine that emerged is remarkably specific. The Egyptians were especially keen on laxatives, using lubricants extracted from the kernel of the desert date. For indigestion, they prescribed an antacid of powdered limestone (calcium carbonate) — not so different from the magnesium carbonate used for heartburn today. For diarrhea, ancient doctors prescribed kaolin, powdered carob, or a plant containing hyoscine, an alkaloid that relaxes smooth muscle and reduces gut movement. For flatulence and intestinal cramps, patients were given cumin and coriander, both regarded as effective antispasmodics (Pain, p. 42).

Conclusion

While many of the remedies used in ancient civilizations would not be considered appropriate today in modern American society, there are certainly applications from that ancient world that remain pertinent to contemporary medicine. For example, in ancient Egypt, the most effective salve for healing scrapes and cuts was made of honey, grease, and lint. "It really did work," writes Woods — and indeed, modern scientists understand that honey can destroy bacteria, which explains why it does not spoil in beehives. Perhaps the modern medical world could take a few cues from the ancient world. It is certainly important that all ancient manuscripts recording medicinal knowledge and practices be fully transcribed and understood.

Works Cited

Indiana University. "Medicine in Ancient Mesopotamia." Retrieved March 11, 2011, from http://www.indiana.edu/~ancmed/meso.HTM.

Lascaratos, J., and Poulacou-Rebelacou, Effie. "The Roots of Geriatric Medicine: Care of the Aged in Byzantine Times (324–1453 AC)." Gerontology, Vol. 46 (2000): 2–6.

Nutton, Vivian. Sciences of Antiquity. London: Psychology Press, 2004.

Pain, Stephanie. "The World's First Pharmacists." New Scientist. 196.2634 (2007): 40–43.

Wolfson, Vladimir. "The Puzzle of Acupuncture." The American Journal of Chinese Medicine 31.6 (2003): 983–990.

Woods, Michael, and Woods, Mary Boyle. Ancient Medicine: From Sorcery to Surgery. Breckenridge, CO: Twenty-First Century Books, 2000.