Innovations and Adaptations in Ancient Egyptian Medicine

Ritner, Robert K.

doi:10.1086/468799

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Some of the earliest texts known concern medical practices and the use of plants as medicine. Six papyri from Egypt, dating to between 2000 BC and 1500 BC (Frey 1985 ), display an extensive knowledge with around 160 different medicinal plants identified (Ritner 2000 ). Hundreds of thousands of medical texts from Mesopotamia were written mostly on clay tablets in cuneiform and date to the 3rd millennium BC (Robson 2008 ; Retief and Cilliers 2007 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleomedicine and the Evolutionary Context of Medicinal Plant Use

Hardy

2020

Rev. Bras. Farmacogn.

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Modern human need for medicines is so extensive that it is thought to be a deep evolutionary behavior. There is abundant evidence from our Paleolithic and later prehistoric past, of survival after periodontal disease, traumas, and invasive medical treatments including trepanations and amputations, suggesting a detailed, applied knowledge of medicinal plant secondary compounds. Direct archeological evidence for use of plants in the Paleolithic is rare, but evidence is growing. An evolutionary context for early human use of medicinal plants is provided by the broad evidence for animal self-medication, in particular, of non-human primates. During the later Paleolithic, there is evidence for the use of poisonous and psychotropic plants, suggesting that Paleolithic humans built on and expanded their knowledge and use of plant secondary compounds.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleomedicine and the Evolutionary Context of Medicinal Plant Use

Hardy

2020

Rev. Bras. Farmacogn.

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“…It is understood by Sigerist to be a surgical manual written to instruct other surgeons. 9 The cases in the papyrus are described in a surprisingly pragmatic manner considering the strength of the Ancient Egyptian belief in magic, the role of deities in afflicting disease 10 and the use of magical spells and incantations as either medical treatments in themselves or as adjuncts to increase the effectiveness of other medical treatments. 11 The traumatic nature of the injuries described in the Edwin Smith Papyrus may explain this unusually practical approach.…”

Section: The Edwin Smith Papyrusmentioning

confidence: 99%

The sword and the knife: a comparison of ancient Egyptian treatment of sword injuries and present day knife trauma.

Wade

2017

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The Edwin Smith papyrus is the oldest known surgical treatise, thought to have been written in 1700 B.C. It was first discovered in Luxor in 1862 and was first translated from hieroglyph script by Egyptologist, James Henry Breasted in 1930. The papyrus details forty eight traumatic injuries which are topographically organised and considered formulaically through examination, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.The Khopesh was an ancient Egyptian sickle shaped sword which was thought to have been used to inflict a slash-type sharp force injury during battle. Treatment of these slash-type wounds as described in the Edwin Smith papyrus are compared with the current treatment of equivalent slash-type injuries, commonly knife wounds in the twenty first century.Comparison of a variety of components involved in the treatment of historical and modern slash-type sharp force wounds has illustrated that despite advances in medical practice, some of the basic principles of our current treatment regimes are derived from practices established thousands of years ago by the ancient Egyptians.

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“…It is easy to imagine that the use of medicines, even though primitive, started with the history of human beings. There seems to have been numerous medicines in ancient Egypt [1] thousands of years ago and also in ancient China where there were many kinds of herbal medicines [2,3]. Traces of herbal or medicinal plants, which might have been utilized, were discovered in ancient ruins in various places throughout the world.…”

Section: Editorialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consideration of the Light and Dark Sides of Medicines: The Thalidomide Example

Hinoshita¹

2017

AICS

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Innovations and Adaptations in Ancient Egyptian Medicine

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Paleomedicine and the Evolutionary Context of Medicinal Plant Use

Paleomedicine and the Evolutionary Context of Medicinal Plant Use

The sword and the knife: a comparison of ancient Egyptian treatment of sword injuries and present day knife trauma.

Consideration of the Light and Dark Sides of Medicines: The Thalidomide Example

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