Curiosities about medicine. Mesopotamia

Introduction

A series of related articles on medicine in antiquity start here; Sometimes, and with the long weight of history, we do not imagine how our ancestors could survive without the technical advances that we enjoy today ... But as we will see in this series, they, in a much less technical and scientific way, also knew how to solve some of the ailments that are mild to us today and that, due to their deficiencies, led to death.

The first hominids already left a mark on their bones of some of the characteristic diseases of these civilizations, the science in charge of discovering these diseases is known as paleopathology, (that is, the study of ancient human pathologies), and already in the Neolithic They find anomalies of congenital origin such as achondroplasia (a disease characterized by disproportion between the parts of the body), endocrine diseases (gigantism, dwarfism, acromegaly, gout), arthritis and even some tumors that have mainly been identified on bone remains.

It is very rare to find individuals over fifty years of age among homo sapiens, so age-related degenerative diseases are obviously rare. The most common were those derived from the nomadic lifestyle of these peoples.

As a curious fact we have tuberculosis, which some authors call it the oldest known disease; the first data of this one, we find them around the 5000 years a. C. and in Egyptian mummies between 3000 and 2400 BC. C.

In relation to medical treatments, we find the trepanation technique, consisting of drilling the bones of the head to access the brain dating from 3000 BC. C.

Mesopotamia

In this first installment, we are going to see medicine in Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent, cradle of civilizations as important as Sumeria, Acadia, Assyria and Babylon. Origin of cuneiform writing, the civilizations settled here around 4000 BC. C. have left us an extremely important written testimony, insofar as the legacy of the laws or code of Hammurabi, provides us with first-hand information on the life forms of the first human civilizations.

In the subject that we are dealing with, there are several articles that refer to the responsibility that doctors acquire and the punishments for their malpractice ...

Curious, not conspicuous, is the supernatural conception of the disease. The first thing the doctor had to do was diagnose the patient by identifying which of the 6000 possible demons was responsible for the problem, with divinatory techniques such as the flights of some birds, the position of the stars or the livers of some animals. The disease was called Shêrtu, a word of Assyrian origin, which could also be identified as sin, moral impurity, divine anger or punishment.

Two hundred and fifty healing plants are collected on tablets together with exorcisms, prayers and offerings as treatments to cure the diseases of Mesopotamian patients (although we will see in future installments that these techniques will continue to be used throughout history).

The name for the doctor was Asû and in the Louvre museum we found a tablet with the proper name of one of them. It is a seal similar to what we understand today as the signature of a document or a prescription… and it read like this: “oh, Edinmungui, servant of the god Girra, protector of women in labor, Ur-Lugal-edin-na, the doctor , is your servant ”.

As we can see, we are not so different, in terms of the conception of disease as divine origin ... in those societies any god could cause disease by abandoning man to his fate or by direct intervention ... they are precisely those gods to whom they refer doctors and sorcerers to invoke the healing of the patient ... how many times have we heard, and not exactly 4000 years ago ... "God will have sent it ..." Or "in God's hands it is" ...

For the next installment, we will talk about Alexandria and medicine in ancient Egypt, the techniques of mummification and the cure of diseases through spells and concoctions….