Ancient Medicine and Surgery It may be hard to believe, but skeletons have been found which prove brain operations took place. Even harder to believe, some show several over the lifetime of the person meaning they survived them. How was this done? Did the ancients know about anesthesiology? It is hard to imagine being operated on this way without being knocked out. It seems the terror of one of these operations could stop many a heart. We know some civilizations believe in just opening the skull to let out evil spirits. The practice was called trepanning and was quite popular in medieval times. The doctor would bore a hole in your skull the size of a quarter and expose the outer membrane of the brain. One of the things it was believed to do was relieve pressure in the head and was thought to be a cure for diseases such as epilepsy, headaches and all sorts of mental disease. Now I have to tell you something even more unbelievable, a woman in the U.S. had a hole drilled into her head in the year 2000 by an amateur surgeon. She said it made her feel better. The men who participated in the operation were fined for practicing medicine without a license and put on probation. So how far does this practice go? The practice of trepanning goes back to the stone age. What is worse than having someone with a circular saw punch a hole in your skull? I think it is someone with a rock doing it. While in later years in was done for supposed medical purposes, it was probably done to let out evil spirits before that. It is said every doctor up to the 19th century carried two trephines in his medical bag. These were the circular saws used in trepanning. We tend to think dentists are a modern phenomenon, but this is not true. We all know dental work can be painful, even in modern times, but even a little over one hundred years ago you would go to your barber to have a tooth pulled, ouch! The art of barbering goes back to the Bronze Age about 3,500 B.C. and over that time barbers became dentists. They not only pulled teeth, but filled cavities, and performed minor surgery. Barbers even built false teeth. It may sound amazing to some people, but skeletons have been found showing people had their teeth drilled and fillings put in over 9,000 years ago. We are talking about modern humans, but something even more incredible has been found and it is a Neanderthal skull which is over 130,000 years old which shows dental work was performed. This Neanderthal is thought to have tried to fill his own tooth by digging it out first. The most important of the ancient Greek doctors was Hippocrates. He is known as the father of modern medicine. He founded a school of medicine and documented different illnesses and as we all know he authored the Hippocratic Oath for physicians. The ancient Greeks believe a lot of different things were responsible for your health or lack thereof. They cited humors, gender social class, mindset, diet, beliefs, location and other things. Humors were the four bodily fluids. They were defined as black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. The ancient Greeks believe illness was punishment from God. The Greeks imported medicines from the Egyptians. Surgery was used to cure those who weren’t cured by entering a dream state to receive advice from God and healing. The Hippocratic Corpus was a book where Hippocrates and his students recorded ailments and it contradicted the belief disease was God’s work. The healing of battle wounds was probably the main concern of ancient doctors. In ancient India the Sushruta Samhita contains a listing of more than 100 plants to be used in combination or singularly on wounds. It mentions keeping wounds clean and medicines to be used to treat keloids which are scars. Ancient Chinese, Korean, Egyptian and Africans were very concerned with treating wounds. In ancient India surgery was said to have advanced. Some of the things surgery would be used for were blood clots and foreign materials in the body. It was stressed that the wound had to be kept extremely clean and it should be sutured. We are talking about thousands of years ago and even though the Indians didn’t know about bacteria they clearly knew cleaning wounds was necessary. The Romans were very good at treating battle wounds and other disorders. Soldiers in the military had longer lifespans than civilians, because of the medical treatment they received. Their greatest doctor was Claudius Galen. He was actually born in Greece. He was able to take his time and study medicine since his family was rich. His father was a famous architect. Galen had been posted as a physician and surgeon to the gladiators in Pergamum and he obtained much knowledge in the field of anatomy. Galen was not a Christian and yet he believed the body was the home for the soul. It is felt he was way ahead of his time and his works were still used up to the end of the Dark Ages, since no real medical advances were made in the Western World during that time. It is amazing to see ancient people doing some of the medical procedures we do today. When we look up anesthetics we see the first use was in the 1840s, but there were anesthetics used in ancient times. The ancient Chinese used acupuncture, ancient Hindus used henbane, wine and hemp. The ancient Greeks used a wine made from mandrake which was said to produce a deep sleep and the potion nepenthe. It seems our ancestors may have had anesthetics which would have made sense with all the battles being fought and all the surgery required. We may have underestimated the medical prowess of our ancestors. |
