Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/42

 treatment of disease and schools for the training of physicians. The chief priest of the temple bore also the title of the "physician-in-chief," and exercised the prerogatives of a chief magistrate. Under this system medical knowledge advanced to a certain stage and then made no further progress. The preponderance of the priestly (i.e., the superstitious) influence was too pronounced to permit anything like real progress.

The papyrus Ebers makes mention of a number of diseases, and among them the following may be noted: abdominal affections (probably dysentery), intestinal worms, inflammations in the region of the anus, hemorrhoids, painful disorders at the pit of the stomach, diseases of the heart, pains in the head, urinary affections, dyspepsia, swellings in the region of the neck, angina, a form of disease of the liver, about thirty different affections of the eyes, diseases of the hair, diseases of the skin, diseases of women, diseases of children, affections of the nose, ears and teeth, tumors, abscesses and ulcers.

In the matter of diagnosis the Egyptian physicians not only employed inspection and palpation, but were in the habit of examining the urine. A statement made in the papyrus Ebers is good ground for the belief that they also employed auscultation to some extent.

Therapeutics constituted beyond all question the strongest part of Egyptian medicine. As might be expected from the strange mixture of the priest and the medical man in every physician, the remedial measures commonly employed consisted in part of prayers and incantations, and in part of rational procedures and the use of drugs. Among the latter class of remedies the following deserve to be mentioned: emetics, cathartics and clysters. Bloodletting, sudorifics, diuretics and substances which cause sneezing were also often employed in Egypt. To produce vomiting the favorite agents were the copper salts and oxymel of squills. Castor oil disguised in beer was given as an aperient. Pomegranate was the drug preferred for the expulsion of worms. Mandragora and opium were also employed as remedies. Foreign drugs were largely imported by the Phoenicians,