 | | It was a hard life in Ancient Egypt |
Scientists there have been examining medical papyri, the ancient Egyptian version of doctors’ notes and textbooks, dating back 3,500 years - a full millennium before the great Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates - was even born, and they say that there’s evidence of both pharmacy and medicine being used. Dr Jackie Campbell of the University’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology says the findings suggest the Egyptians were using such methods as treating wounds with honey, resins and antimicrobial metals, and prescribing laxatives of castor oil, figs and bran long before the Greeks. And it wasn’t just one or two treatments. The early doctors on the banks of the Nile had many cures and remedies at their disposal.
 | | Egyptian papyrus |
Arthritis and other muscloskeletal disorders were treated with rubs to stimulate blood flow and poultices to warm and soothe, celery and saffron treated rheumatism (something that is being investigated in modern medicine at the moment), and pomegranate was used to eradicate tapeworms a treatment that was still being used as recently as the 1950s! Most interesting of all, the treatments they used aren’t a long way off the ones that your own doctor would prescribe now! "When we compared the ancient remedies against modern pharmaceutical protocols and standards," explained Dr Campbell, "we found the prescriptions in the ancient documents not only compared with pharmaceutical preparations of today but that many of the remedies had therapeutic merit.
 | | Sometimes, the drugs didn't work! |
"Many we discovered survived into the last century and, indeed, some remain in use today, albeit that the active component is now produced synthetically. "Other ingredients endure and acacia is still used in cough remedies, while aloe forms a basis to soothe and heal skin conditions." So it seems that as much as the Greeks may have advanced medicine, they didn’t kick the whole thing off. Maybe it’s time doctors took a Pharaoh’s pledge alongside that Hippocratic Oath. | 
