Ancient Egyptian Herbal Remedies For this episode I am going to write as an Egyptian medical practitioner. Even though the ailments and remedies described were taken from primary sources, the doctor and patients are fictional. 1506 B.C. This is going to be the first of many entries regarding my line of work. My name is Amon Narmer and I practice medicine in the city of Memphis. I have been in this field of work since I was eighteen years old. My father was also a medical practitioner and I learned everything through his teachings. I have been practicing medicine for fifteen years, but I have never kept records until now. I am going to begin recording all of my findings and remedies after each session with my patients. I will include descriptions of ailments, remedies and surgeries.  I have recently discovered the healing power of dates. I included dates in my remedy for the boy with the stomach pains, and I have used them in many other remedies for different ailments. In another patient I saw that he had large red bumps on his head. He complained that his head felt as if spiders were crawling on his scalp and could no longer tolerate it. He was not able to sleep at night and could not sit still. I inspected his head and decided to make him a cream to apply to the bumps. In this cream, I mixed one part honey, one part date juice, and one soft fruit. I told him to apply this mixture to his head every night for three days. He came back to me after three days and the bumps were no longer on his head. The itching had gone away and he was again able to sleep at night. In another patient that I had I again used a cream made with dates. I had a woman come in complaining of hair loss. She said that she would wake up in the morning with hair on her pillow. She was embarrassed to be outside of her house because of a bald spot on the back of her head. I was able to make oil for her to apply to her head. I mixed one leg of a female greyhound, the stone of a date, and one hoof from a donkey. I boiled this mixture in oil and gave her the oil. She had to apply this to her head for seven days. Her hair began to grow back after forty eight days. She has come to me since then and shown me that she is no longer losing hair. The mixture that I made for her is not available to everyone. Since I had to make the oil from sources that are much harder to obtain than herbs, I had to charge her much more than I normally charge for my remedies. Only the wealthy people are able to afford such remedies. I know that it is not fair to a lot of people, but I cannot charge any less for rare ingredients. I do not know of many other doctors who are using dates as a remedy. I started using them because they were very common and would cost me almost  I am going to continue to explore the healing powers of dates and other readily accessible plants from the Nile. I will continue to write my findings in this book and record each patient. Until next time, Amon Narmer Interpretation: I enjoyed writing this episode because of the subject. Until I started doing research for this episode, I did not know much about dates. I had no idea that people have been using them for thousands of years for medical remedies. It is important for people today to recognize and appreciate medicine from ancient times. Without all of the knowledge and experiments that were done, we would have nothing today. References: Ebers, Georg. Ebers medical papyrus. 1500 B.C. This primary source was very helpful. I found almost all of the ailments and recipes for remedies in these papers. Estes, J. Worth. The Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt. Science History Publications: Canton, Mass. 1989. In this secondary source I was able to learn about the diet of the Egyptians and about dates being used as a remedy for respritory problems. Pictures: Dates hanging from a date palm. Sheppard Software. Weblink. Days of the Papyrus Ebers. Washington State University College of Pharmacy. Weblink |