Prehistoric surgery: ancient-wisdom.co.uk/surgery.htm On prehistoric brain surgery anatomist Professor Kappers reminisced, It is even probable that the trephine holes found in prehistoric skulls 50,000 years old were made for curative purposes. Mesopotamian medicine was taken very seriously. Practitioners were priests and were ruled by the strict laws included in the code of King Hannurabi. This code, carved on a black stone eight feet high which was discovered at Shush in what is now Iran in 1901, can be seen today at the Louvre Museum in Paris. At its top can be seen the emperor Hannurabi receiving the laws from the sun god Shamash. His code details family law, the rights of slaves, the penalties for theft and the rewards for success and the severe punishment for failure on the part of the surgeon. We have evidence from these writings that surgical conditions such as wounds, fractures and abscesses were treated. Thus we read: If a doctor heals a free mans broken limb and has healed a sprained tendon, the patient is to pay the doctor five shekels of silver. If it is the son of a nobleman, he will give him three shekels of silver. If the physician has healed a mans eye of a severe wound by employing a bronze instrument and so healed the mans eye, he is to be paid ten shekels of silver. If a doctor has treated a man for a severe wound with a bronze instrument and the man dies and if he has opened the spot in the mans eye with the instrument of bronze but destroys the mans eye, his hands are to be cut off. (2) ancient-wisdom.co.uk/surgery.htm
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 15:12:53 +0000
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