ANCIENT DOCTORS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12500, 29 March 1909, Page 1

ANCIENT DOCTORS.

Dr John D. Comrie, lecturer to Edinburgh University on the History of Medicine, has been speaking of the' medicine of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and has shown that doctors are-mentioned so remotely as 2700 B.C. in Babylonian records. In his interesting address, reported in the British . Medical Journal, Dr Comrie says that nine of. the laws in the Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon about 2200 8.C., referre.l tithe remuneration" of medical practitioners. From incidental ; references '.>, rppears that: "The npsiiM*,' >zl for cataract was frequently performed, and .that, unqualified persons attempting surgical operations successfully were to be.punished by , having their hands struck off." "When Nineyah was destroyed in 606 8.C., the library of King. Assurbanipal, consisting of some 20,000 books of cuneiform characters inscribed on baked clay tables, was left among the ruihsl Out of these nearly 1000 consisted of medical works which had come down from a very early epoch.- Even while Israel sojoxir■ned in Egypt, our modern remedial substances were well-tried. Among" them were such familiar things as magnesia, lime, iron, soda, nitre, vermilion, peppermint, fennel, thyme, cassia, carraway, turpentine, gentian, opium, mustard and Unseed. The Egyptians had poultices, inhalations and' massage. Tumours' were removed by means of beautifully shaped bronzed knives, and bleeding was ; stopped by_the cautery". For the treatment of ophthalmia applications were employed, and the eyelids were' manipulated by,-copper forceps, almost identical with the steel ones of the present "day. _ The. sacredness of the human body did not permit of amputation, except of hopelessly fractured limbs, but the fractures of bones- were set with neatness and precision in. splints of wood or plant fibre wrapped round with linen bands. The shapeliness ci broken limbs after treatment by Egyptian doctors was moderately good, but' did not reach the success of the" Greeks, who, in Plato's time, seem to have anticipated every device known to this branch of modern surgery.