Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/33

 CHAPTER II

ORIENTAL MEDICINE

The researches of the scholar working in combination with the engineer have unearthed—more particularly in Mesopotamia, in Egypt and in Greece—evidences of an ancient medical science far advanced beyond that briefly described in the preceding chapter. These evidences relate to nations that flourished as far back as four thousand years B. C. While they are very fragmentary and cover historical events which are often separated from one another by long periods of time, these data nevertheless suffice to give one a fairly good idea of the then prevailing state of medical knowledge. Both Pagel and Neuburger adopt the plan of discussing these different nationalities separately, and I shall follow their example.

Medicine in Mesopotamia.—As appears from the most recent investigations the Sumerians were the first occupants of the region lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. It was from them that their Semitic conquerors, the Babylonians and the Assyrians, received a civilization which, already about 4000 B. C., had reached a wonderful degree of development. The canalization of the low-lying lands of that region, the organization of a religious and civil government of a most efficient type, the invention first of picture-writing and then of the cuneiform characters, the cultivation of the arts and natural sciences and especially of astronomy and mathematics to a high degree of perfection,—these are among the things which were accomplished by this very clever race of men. In addition, however, to these useful activities the Babylonians developed and cultivated diligently the science of astrology—that is, the science of predicting human events