Medical symbolism in connection with historical studies in the arts of healing and hygiene

by Thomas S. Sozinskey

Fig. 11.—Anubis.

One very often hears that Thoth was to the Egyptians the god of medicine, just as Æsculapius was to the Greeks and Romans. Even the late Dr. Aitken Meigs, a scholarly physician, accepted this idea. In an address, to be referred to later, he says: “Æsculapius is, doubtless, the Egyptian Thoth, or Hermes Trismegistus, whose symbols, the staff and twining serpent, surmounted with the mystic hawk of Horus-Ra and the solar uræus,[316] appear in the ancient temple Pselcis, near Dakkeh, in Nubia.” The Doctor is about as wide of the mark as Forbes Winslow, when he says that the Grecian “Apollo and Minerva answered to the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians; and Orpheus, the priest, poet, and physician, usurped the place of Thoth.”[317]

Hermes, Thoth, or Thot, the Tet or Taautes of the Phœnicians, was not the god of medicine among the Egyptians, any more than he was the god of any other special branch of knowledge. He was the patron god of all kinds of learning.

Says Ebers: “The discovery of nearly every science is attributed to the ibis-headed god, Thoth, the writer or clerk of heaven, whom the Greeks compared to their god, Hermes.”[318]

It is no doubt true, however, that Hermes was credited with taking considerable interest in medical matters. He was said to have been the author of six books on the healing art, in which anatomy, pathology, and therapeutics were treated of, together with diseases of the eye,—a part of the body which has always suffered much in Egypt. Ebers remarks that “the book on the use of medicine has been preserved to the present day in the ‘Papyrus-Ebers.’”[319]

Having referred to the “Papyrus-Ebers,” it may be well to say a few words about it. It was discovered a few years ago by the learned and versatile Egyptologist, Herr Ebers, and is the best preserved of all the ancient Egyptian manuscripts extant. It was written at Sais during the eighteenth dynasty; that is, in the sixteenth century before our era. It consists of 110 pages. In it we have the hermetic medical work of the ancient Egyptians, with the contents of which the Alexandrian Greeks were familiar. The god Thoth is called in it “the Guide” of physicians, and the composition of it is attributed to him. This venerable document treats of many internal and external diseases of most parts of the body. Special attention is given to the visual organs. Drugs belonging to all the kingdoms of nature are used, and with those prescribed are numbers according to which they are weighed with weights and measured with hollow vessels. Accompanying the prescriptions are noted the pious axioms to be repeated by the physician while compounding and giving them to the patient. The German government has published the work in fac-simile, a copy of which I have examined. There is a copy of it, I think, in the Astor Library, New York.

Medicine certainly consisted of more than charms and the like, at a very early period, in Egypt. Indeed, in the remains of Manetho’s history of the country, it is said of the successor of Menes, the first king of the first dynasty, which dates back to about 4000 years before our era: “Athothis, his son, reigned 57 years; he built the palaces at Memphis, and left the anatomical books, for he was a physician.”[320] The custom of embalming the dead necessarily led to at least a rough knowledge of the anatomy of the body.

Sesostris, or Sesortosis, the second king of the third dynasty, sometimes gets credit for being “the actual founder of medicine.”[321] Manetho says of him: “He is called Asclepius by the Egyptians, for his medical knowledge.”[322]

According to Herodotus and Diodorus, medical practice was carried on in a highly rational way at an early period in Egypt. Mr. Sayce ventures to say that in the period of the eighteenth dynasty medicine was “in almost as advanced a state as in the age of Galen; the various diseases known were carefully distinguished from one another, and their symptoms were minutely described, as well as their treatment. The prescriptions recommended in each case are made out in precisely the same way as the prescriptions of a modern doctor.”[323] Mr. Sayce bases these statements on the “Papyrus-Ebers.” However, we are informed by Herodotus that specialists were common when he visited the country, which was about 450 years before our era; but this must not be accepted as proof that medicine was necessarily in a very advanced state. Here is what the Grecian historian says: “Medicine is practiced among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder, and no more. Thus, the country swarms with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye; others, of the head; others, again, of the teeth; others, of the intestines; and some, those which are not local.”[324] As to their philosophy of morbid conditions, he says: “They have a persuasion that every disease to which men are liable is occasioned by substances whereon they feed.” This doctrine led them “to purge the body by means of emetics and clysters” for “three successive days in each month.”[325]

In respect to medical specialism in Egypt, I may further say that, according to Ebers,[326] as early as 1500 before our era, any one requiring a physician sent for him, not to his house, but to the temple. There a statement was obtained from the messenger concerning the complaint from which the sick person was suffering; and then it was left to the principal of the medical staff of the sanctuary to select that master of the healing art whose special knowledge and experience qualified him to be best suited for the treatment of the case. No honorarium was expected from the patient. The fee was paid by the State.