Doctors: Past, Present, Future - Winning Essay of My Artifact/ My Future High School Contest

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.

            Texts from ancient Mesopotamia frequently mention two different approaches to healing. The first, asûtu, was based on observation. The asu, the doctor or physician practicing asûtu, used observation to diagnose and treat illness by natural means. This approach to healing is similar to the practice of modern medicine. In the second approach, called ashipu, doctors focused on spiritual remedies, believing that supernatural beings were the causes of illness. In some very different cases, specialists from both approaches might even collaborate.

            Very little is known about the training of doctors in ancient Mesopotamia, suggesting that, unlike today, their training was not as extensive or important. In urban areas, some medical “students” may have studied religious texts to learn how to placate the supernatural causes behind disease, possibly learning some practical remedies. Outside the cities, however, it is more likely that there was no formal training; aspiring doctors probably relied on some kind of apprenticeship under a local healer. There were no officially recognize medical standards for practicing healing; standardized training and medical schools are modern inventions. Today, it is required that aspiring doctors go through years of training, becoming a specialist of one part of the medical field. In the ancient world, however, it was not uncommon for one doctor to do everything.

            Supernatural beings were often seen as the cause of diseases that doctors in ancient Mesopotamia could not understand with the limited technology of their time. This could lead to the assumption that very little medical science was actually involved in ancient medical practice. Tablet 28 of the diagnostic and prognostic handout by Esagil-kīn-apli, scholar and physician in the Neo-Babylonian age, describes symptoms that today we understand to be neurological conditions. The tablet explains that if a man extends his leg, and his mouth is seized and he is unable to speak, he is being punished by a demon. Today we know that these are the symptoms of a seizure. While perhaps some treatments mentioned on the tablet may have acted as depressants on the central nervous system, the goals of the ancient treatments described here were to placate and protect the individual from any further supernatural forces. If treatment for similar ailments worked, it is most likely it was either due to coincidence or to the placebo effect.

            One the other hand, there did seem to be some medical science, or at least what we would call scientific procedure, present in ancient Mesopotamian medicine. Tablets, like Tablet 28, describe a basic procedure in Mesopotamian medicine that is similar to that which doctors follow today. They tell us that first the doctor made a careful observation of the patient, suggested possible remedies, and then had someone record the information so that it could be used by others. Tablet 28 shows that, just like in the modern world, at least some doctors followed an established procedure of diagnosing and treating their patients, and then sharing what they learned for the benefit of other patients. Looked at this way, it is possible to see Tablet 28 as similar to the Journal of the American Medical Association, a publish which contains article by doctors describing what they have learned in the course of treating a particular patient for others.

            There also seemed to be some scientific method involved in the use of medicines by ancient Mesopotamian physicians. Some of the most important texts we have for understanding medicine in Mesopotamia were written to describe and prescribe the use of various herbs. For thousands of years, long after the Mesopotamians no longer existed, people continued to use herbs and other plans to help treat various diseases and conditions. More recently, American medicine is reconsidering the usefulness of these ancient remedies. It is possible to argue that some of the observations and treatments developed by ancient Mesopotamian doctors contributed to the long evolution of medical science, and thus have had an indirect but significant impact on modern medicine.

            Looking back on the ancient Mesopotamians, it is too easy to dismiss their medicinal practices as nonsensical, but a closer look suggests that many of their practices made sense within their cultural context, and that some of their practices are surprisingly similar to those today. This is one of the reasons why Tablet 28, and the job of the doctor, interests me so much. Science seems so concrete but it is susceptible to change. Doctors in the ancient world provided a foundation on which we continue to build upon today, and are a part of the continual evolution of medical science. My examination of medicine in Mesopotamia suggests that if we were able to travel into the future, we would hear people speaking of the primitive nature of our medical practices and technologies today. This is an excellent reminder that we are always dependent on the past, and that we should continue to strive for deeper medical knowledge. There is still much more to discover in the field of medicine, some of which I hope to be a part of.
 
 
 

Bibliography

 
Bertman, Stephen, “Medicine in Ancient Mesopotamia.” Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2003. Ancient and Medieval History Online. Facts on File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/actcivielink2.asp?ItemID=WE49&iPin=MESP0857&SingleRecord=True (accessed December 15, 2013).
 
Chadwick, Robert, “Science and Technology: Astronomy and Medicine in Mesopotamia and Egypt.” First Civilizations, City: Equinox, 2005, pp. 118-120.
 
Cunningham, Matthew, Jack Green, and Emily Teeter, eds., Our Work: Modern Jobs – Ancient Origins. Chicago: the Oriental Institute, 2013.
 
“The Road to Becoming a Doctor.” Association of American Medical Colleagues. https://www.aamc.org/download/68806/data/
 
Surlock, JoAnn and Burton R. Anderson, Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine: Ancient Sources, Translations, and Modern Medical Analyses. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.