HIST 249 Lecture 4: HIST249 Lecture 4
Document Summary
Not a lot of the hippocratic corpus is derived from egyptian medicine. There is some communication, egypt has had a huge reputation among the greek with their older civilisation but larger technical advancements. There are a number of papyrus scrolls dating back to 1600 bc. This is broken down into cases that are generic cases of particular problems such as fractures and perforations. Each case is laid out in the same way: title, examination and prognosis, treatment, explanations. A lot of premodern technical knowledge and medical knowledge was encapsulated into statements that people would memorise so they would be able to recall in clinical situations key points of action. We can tell the egyptians used ointments and topical treatments. There is no discussion about disease, the workings of the body etc. It has an abundant written literature that is mainly storage and reference to codify what is best practice. Note: surgery did not mean invasive medicine before.
