I’ve spent the last five and a half years being tended to by a score of doctors and nurses and it saved my life. It’s given me time to really examine their profession and the the abilities they have to save lives. Todays post will introduce odd facts and historical information where the roots of our current medical treatments began. Some of it is a little strange and also a little frightening but that’s how we’ve learned the skills being used today.

• The first image of the doctors stitching up a wound can be found on the Edwin Smith Papyrus (1600 B.C.).

• Ancient Egyptian medicine was considered so advanced that the rulers of neighboring kingdoms would often bribe, cajole, or even send someone to kidnap the Pharaoh’s best doctors.

• The 3000-year-old “Ebers Papyrus” was written on a 65 foot long scroll and describes treatments for the eyes, skin, extremities, and organs. It also lists medicinal plants such as mustard, saffron, onions, garlic, thyme, sesame, caraway, and poppy seed, and offers more than 800 recipes for their use.

• The Egyptians used opium as crude forms of anesthesia when operating on patients. They also created a milder painkiller by mixing water with vinegar and adding ground Memphite stone. The resulting “laughing gas” was inhaled.

• The first known surgery for cataracts was performed in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in about A.D. 100.

• A collection of 37 surgical instruments is engraved on the wall in the Egyptian Temple of Kom-Ombo (2d century B.C.). Some show amazing similarities to modern surgical instruments and includes scalpels, scissors, needles, forceps, lancets, hooks, and pincers.

• The original Hippocratic Oath was written by a school of philosophers known as the Pythagoreans and was actually a reaction against the writings of Hippocrates. The Pythagoreans were conservative and even backward looking in many ways forbidding many medical practices, including the surgery.

• The Romans considered cabbage to be a magically protective food. The philosopher Cato wrote that Romans should not only eat cabbage at every meal, but also drink the urine of someone who’d eaten cabbage two days before.

• In both ancient Greece and Rome, doctors didn’t need licenses or any formal training to practice. Anyone could call himself a doctor. If his methods worked, he attracted more patients, if not, he found himself another job.

• Most Roman surgical instruments were made of bronze, or occasionally of silver. Iron was considered taboo by both Greeks and Romans and was never used for surgical instruments on religious grounds.

I’M FEELING BETTER ALREADY . . . HOW ABOUT YOU.