The pharaohs' pharmacists

New Scientist (Stephanie Pain)

The online version of this article requires you to be a subscriber to the New Scientist magazine. However, the print edition is widely available if you want to get hold of the full article without subscribing. The article is in the 15th December 2007 issue, and is well worth getting hold of (there's a great full scale feature in it about procrastination as well!). Here are the opening paragraphs of the four page article:

AS EGYPTIAN mummies go, Asru is a major celebrity. During her life in the 8th century BC, she was known for her singing at the temple of Amun in Karnak; now she is famous for her medical problems. Forensic studies have revealed that although Asru lived into her sixties, she was not a well woman. She had furred-up arteries, desert lung (pneumoconiosis) caused by breathing in sand, osteoarthritis, a slipped disc, periodontal disease and possibly diabetes, as well as parasitic worms in her intestine and bladder. Her last years must have been full of pain and suffering. After all, what could her doctor do to help? Say a few prayers and recite a spell or two?

If you read the history books, that's about as much as Asru could expect. But not according to Jackie Campbell at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester in the UK. Her research suggests that Asru's doctor probably consulted a handbook of remedies and prescribed something to soothe her cough, deaden the pain in her joints and perhaps even expel some of those worms (see "Cure of the mummy"). What's more, Campbell's findings indicate that Asru's doctor had more than a thousand years of pharmaceutical expertise to draw on. If she is right, the history of medicine needs rewriting. . . .

The key obstacle to establishing just what the Egyptians knew about pharmacy has been translation. While the Greeks left a vast legacy of medical texts in a familiar language, we know of only 12 from the time of the pharaohs - written on papyrus in a vanished language that scholars are still grappling with. From their descriptions of diseases and treatments, the texts have left little doubt that the ancient Egyptians had considerable medical skills, but weighing up their pharmaceutical knowledge has proved trickier: although the papyri include some 2000 prescriptions, doubts surround the identity of many of the ingredients listed.

Most of the remedies here are highly practical and the article says that two thirds of the recipes used as prescriptions would have been effective, which is impressive. An example of one of the diseases that could be treated is the following prescription for waterborne parasites - extract of pomegranate, which contains a powerful antihelminthic (and was used up until 50 years ago against tape worm).

For those interested in medicine in ancient Egypt, the Metropolitan Museum of Art book The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt by James P. Allen is a very good introduction. It was produced to accompany the exhibition of the same title, and has some great photographs of artefacts, as well as photographs and translations from the Edwin Smith Papyrus.