Daily Life- Medicine

Adam Farris

Doctor Training:

The Ancient Egyptians practiced medicine for centuries.
People that wanted to study medicine had special training that was after the normal required Education
They learned about symptoms of diseases and how to diagnose and treat them.
Doctors understood almost perfectly how the organs worked and where they are and structure of the body.
They used pulse rate to tell if the patient was healthy or not.

“Magic”:

Doctors believed in treating problems with both magic and medicine.
They thought you could use both magic and medicine to drive the “worms” out.
They thought that most diseases created a worm or multiple worms inside of the patient’s body.
Magicians were used to cast spells to get rid of the illness if the treatment is ineffective or they don’t have much ingredient that the cure needed.

Meds and Remedies:

They normally used garlic, plants, or other herbs in their treatments.
Doctors had prescriptions for things like eye problems, tumors, scorpion stings, fevers, and snake bites.
Most doctors weren’t trained in dentistry so most common folk had very poor dental hygiene
Imhotep was the dentist of King Djoser and he still had poor dental health from what we can salvage from the tomb
Most pharaohs were found with fake or golden teeth.
There are three possible ideas that could be true, the pharaohs were not very good at maintaining dental health, the pharaoh had them as a sign as how rich he was, or the golden teeth were part of the embalming process.
Either way, we know that dental health wasn’t a very high priority in Ancient Egypt.

Surgery and Childbirth:

Doctors treated wounds with bandages or stiches but didn’t perform surgery.
They didn’t have pain killers back then so the pain alone would possibly kill the patient.
In childbirth, doctors relied on magic and praying to god instead of medicine.
There was no way to help with medicine.
Several gods were called upon to help the woman.
Charms, spells, and prayers were casted upon the woman to insure safety for the woman and the baby from childhood diseases.
Most diseases back then were lethal to babies.