Life in ancient Egypt was, typically, short, certainly shorter than in most parts of the world today. A large number of embalmed bodies have now been examined, alongside the skeletons of those not rich enough to afford the process. There was a peak in death rates at about the age of 3 when children transferred from breast milk with its protective powers to solid food. The average life expectancy for those who survived childhood is calculated at 29 with few individuals surviving beyond 60. Life expectancy was longer for the elite, but one survey of 26 royal mummies suggested that only three of them lived beyond 50. Many Egyptians were afflicted with parasites, acquired probably from polluted water sources, while lungs suffered from sand and coal dust (probably inhaled from the smoke of fires). Tuberculosis was also widespread. Teeth were worn down, probably by the silicone from the stones used for the threshing or grinding, and gum abscesses were common. The analysis of bones also suggests painful and debilitating handicaps. Many individuals who survived to 40 had spinal osteophytosis, excrescences on the spine caused by excessive strain. Such lesions are missing from the richer burials, although many of these show signs of arteriosclerosis, originating from a diet rich in fat. Cancer was rare, probably because few Egyptians reached the ages at which it becomes common. (See John Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, London, 1997.)
Homer wrote in the Odyssey that medicine in Egypt was more developed than anywhere in the world, and Herodotus, writing some three centuries later, agreed with him. The Egyptian physicians certainly had some expertise, fostered by the practice of specialization and the meticulous examination of disorders. In one papyrus different kinds of snakebites are described in tiny detail each with a prognosis. ‘As for the cobra serpent, with the hue of sand, if it bites a man he suffers on the side that was not pierced and does not suffer on the side with the bite; it is an illness I can treat’—apparently with emetics and bleedings. The Ebers papyrus has some 700 prescriptions for internal diseases set out according to the organ affected. The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus shows a profound empirical knowledge of different kinds of injuries with recommendations for treatment. It contains the earliest known description of a brain. If a skull is smashed open in an accident, you find an
Organ ‘like the corrugations which appear on molten copper in the crucible, and something therein throbs and flutters under your fingers like the weak place in the crown of the head of a child when it has not become whole’ Other texts concentrate on dislocated joints. Egyptian physicians seem to have been able to mend broken bones and treat open wounds, while there are skeletons whose trepanned skulls have healed over, suggesting that the recipients of surgery sometimes survived.
However, effective treatment was hindered because there was no proper understanding of how the human body worked, despite the close examination the practice of embalming allowed. The heart was considered the centre of the body, and from it flowed all bodily fluids, not only blood but saliva, urine, and semen. It was believed that all internal illnesses were caused by obstructions of their flow, often due to the malevolence of a god. Successful freeing of these obstructions relied on complicated techniques and potions, most of which would have had no effect whatsoever on any illness. Nile mud, dirt from a patient’s fingernails, and mouse droppings were used alongside a variety of herbs and extracts from animals. Recovery from most illnesses would only have been through natural healing or chance fitting of a particular remedy to the right disease (the application of mouldy bread, an anticipation of penicillin, for instance).
In short, Egyptian medicine operated in a context in which empirical approaches (sometimes, as with the effects of snakebites, accurate, sometimes as with the internal workings of the body, hopelessly misguided) mixed with what could be called magic. No treatment could be effective without reciting an incantation over the patient and this may have acted as a placebo in that the very act of consulting a doctor can help towards healing. What might appear to be an irrational precept, that a medicinal plant must be gathered before daybreak as some texts required, for instance, is shown to be ‘rational’ in that alkaloids such as morphine vary in strength in particular parts of a plant during the daily cycle. However, there was little incentive to reach a deeper understanding of the body. Texts often achieved a sacred quality in themselves and were passed on from generation to generation without questioning. The Edwin Smith papyrus dates from the Second Intermediate (Hyksos) Period but has material that is a thousand years older. The older a treatment the more respect it was given. The Greek historian Diodorus, who visited Egypt in the first century Bc, wrote that the doctor who followed a text exactly would not be blamed if the patient died, but if he disregarded it and the patient suffered he could even be sentenced to death.
World History
