Even the ancient Egyptians had paid sick days

How state-supported health care worked in ancient times.

By Anne Austin

We might think of state-supported health care as an innovation of the 20th century, but it’s a much older tradition. In fact, texts from a village dating to Egypt’s New Kingdom period, about 3,100 to 3,600 years ago, suggest that ancient Egypt had a state-supported health-care network designed to ensure that workers making the king’s tomb were productive.

Health care boosted productivity on the royal tombs

The village of Deir el-Medina was built for the workmen who made the royal tombs during the New Kingdom (1550 to 1070 BCE). During this period, kings were buried in the Valley of the Kings in a series of rock-cut tombs, not the enormous pyramids of the past. The village was built close enough to the royal tomb to ensure that workers could hike there on a weekly basis.

These workmen were not what we normally picture when we think about the men who built and decorated ancient Egyptian royal tombs — they were highly skilled craftsmen. The workmen at Deir el-Medina were given a variety of amenities afforded only to those with the craftsmanship and knowledge necessary to work on something as important as the royal tomb.

The village was allotted extra support: The Egyptian state paid them monthly wages in the form of grain and provided them with housing and servants to assist with tasks such as washing laundry, grinding grain and porting water. Their families lived with them in the village, and wives and children could also benefit from these provisions from the state.

Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus; earliest mention of cancer

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: World Cancer Day, which falls every year on Feb. 4, has a link to ancient Egypt as The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, currently in the New York Academy of Medicine, is believed to contain the earliest written record of cancer in mankind history.

In addition to providing the earliest reference to suturing of non-infected wounds with a needle and thread along with preparing splints for bone fracture, the text, dating from 1,600 B.C., also contains diagnosis of eight cases of breast tumors along with treatment by cauterizing tools, ancient Egyptian history professor Sherif el-Sabban told The Cairo Post Wednesday.

“The papyrus, written in hieratic script, contains 48 case histories on head, thorax and spine injuries with each presentation divided into title, examination, diagnosis, and treatment,” said Sabban, adding that the breast cancer is mentioned in the papyrus but it was considered non-curable.

For example, in case 39, dealing with “tumors with prominent heads and have produced cysts of pus in a man’s breast,” the author recommended cauterizing tumors using a “fire drill” said Sabban.

“American archaeologist Edwin Smith purchased the papyrus from Luxor in 1862; it was donated by his daughter to Brooklyn Museum in 1906 before it was presented to the New York Academy of Medicine where it has resided since 1920,” former head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Abdel Halim Noureddin told The Cairo Post Thursday.

The manuscript was first translated by former Director of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute American archaeologist James Henry Breasted (1865-1935,) said Noureddin, adding that this surgical text is an incomplete copy of an original document that perhaps dates back to the pyramid age (2700B.C.–2200 B.C.)

“Unlike other civilizations in the Middle East, the ancient Egyptian understanding of traumatic injuries was based on scientific practices gained through observation and examination, rather than depending on magic or supernatural powers,” he added.

Source: http://www.thecairopost.com/news/136200/sticker/edwin-smith-surgical-papyrus-earliest-mention-of-cancer

Stanford archaeologist leads the first detailed study of human remains at the ancient Egyptian site of Deir el-Medina

By combining an analysis of written artifacts with a study of skeletal remains, Stanford postdoctoral scholar Anne Austin is creating a detailed picture of care and medicine in the ancient world.

By Barbara Wilcox 

Ancient Egyptian workers in a village that's now called Deir el-Medina were beneficiaries of what Stanford Egyptologist Anne Austin calls "the earliest documented governmental health care plan."

The craftsmen who built Egyptian pharaohs' royal tombs across the Nile from the modern city of Luxor worked under grueling conditions, but they could also take a paid sick day or visit a "clinic" for a free checkup.

For decades, Egyptologists have seen evidence of these health care benefits in the well preserved written records from the site, but Austin, a specialist in osteo-archaeology (the study of ancient bones), led the first detailed study of human remains at the site.

A postdoctoral scholar in the Department of History, Austin compared Deir el-Medina's well-known textual artifacts to physical evidence of health and disease to create a newly comprehensive picture of how Egyptian workers lived. Austin is continuing her research during her tenure as a fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities.

In skeletal remains that she found in the village's cemeteries, Austin saw "evidence for state-subsidized health care among these workers, but also significant occupational stress fueled by pressure from the state to work."

Ancient Egyptian remedies

Does modern medicine have anything to learn from the medicine of the ancient Egyptians, asks Mai Samih

The ancient Egyptians, who embalmed their deceased so carefully, must have had a profound knowledge of anatomy. This is shown in tomb reliefs depicting surgeons dealing with patients and in famous medical texts such as those in the ancient Egyptian Ebers and Edwin Smith papyri.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus who visited Egypt around 440 BCE wrote extensively of his observations of ancient Egyptian medical practices. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder also wrote favourably of them in his historical works. The ancient Greek fathers of medicine, Hippocrates, Herophilos, Erasistratus and later Galen, all studied at the temple of Amenhotep in Egypt and acknowledged the contributions of the ancient Egyptians to Greek medicine.

In his book Life of the Ancient Egyptians, author Eugen Strouhal quotes Herodotus describing Egyptian doctors by saying that “the practice of medicine is so divided among them that each physician treats one disease and no more. There are plenty of physicians everywhere; some are eye doctors, some deal with the heart, others with the teeth or the belly, and some with hidden maladies.”

Belgian Scholar Frans Jonckheere writes that there were 82 kinds of doctors known by name in ancient Egypt. No female nurses existed to help these doctors, but there were male nurses, dressers, masseurs, and lay therapists there for help. Czech physician Vincenc Strouhal wrote that the most advanced branch of medicine in ancient Egypt was surgery.

Philippa Lang, Medicine and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt. Studies in Ancient Medicine - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.09.48

Philippa Lang, Medicine and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt. Studies in Ancient Medicine, 41.   Leiden; Boston: Brill, Pp. xii, 318.  ISBN 9789004218581.  $151.00.

Reviewed by Michaela Senkova, University of Leicester

Medicine and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt is the latest title published by Brill in their ‘Studies in Ancient Medicine’ series.1 It presents a rich overview of the forms of healing employed across all strata of society in Ptolemaic Egypt, from ‘temple medicine’ to scientific approaches to medical issues. The term ‘society’, however, means here primarily the Egyptians and the Greeks, whose testimony to healing practices and theory presented in literary, archaeological, papyrological and epigraphic evidence represents the core source material for the book. Medical traditions and theoretical approaches of social minorities like the Jewish communities, for instance, do not find their way into the text for ‘simplicity’s sake’ (xi). Consequently, much of the volume is concerned with the contrast between ethnic and cultural approaches to medicine among the native Egyptians and the Greek settlers, and the evaluation of arguments for and against the possible influences these two medical cultures may have had upon each other. Lang covers a broad canvas in this compact study, recognizing a number of socio-cultural factors as medically relevant (namely agriculture, botany, demography, linguistics and religious practice) in order to explore how inhabitants of Ptolemaic Egypt might have experienced and dealt with disease.