My Artifact / My Future High School Student Writing Contest 2013-2014 Winner:
Merrick Fahrenwald
10th Grade, The University of Chicago Laboratory School
Essay Title: Doctors: Past, Present, Future
 |
Medical Tablet. Iraq. ca. 750-500 BC.
OIM A3441. |
The manner in which we currently diagnose and treat
diseases would have been inconceivable to doctors in ancient times.
Nevertheless, there
are medical insights we have today that would not exist without the
ideas developed by ancient physicians and healers. By looking at
Mesopotamian doctors
in their cultural context, I realized that many ancient medical
practices that seem primitive today are more advanced than I realized,
some being
surprisingly similar to those today. This suggests that hundreds of
years from now, people will look back at our medical procedures and view
them as
primitive, unless they too take a closer look at our cultural
context. It is fascinating how times can change so much that something
that seems natural
during one era can seem incredibly odd or primitive years later. In
the course of my research, I have learned that some of the medical
knowledge we have
today would not be possible without the foundation laid by the
physicians of the ancient Near East.
