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Ancient Egyptian Medicine & Medical Practices

Timble2

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I know an Ancient Egyptian cure for a headache that involves tieing a faience (type of ceramic) crocodile to your head with a piece of papyrus with a prayer to the gods. They also used crocodile droppings in some or their medicines. :err:

*I meant head, not heard, obviously, and tieing not typing :oops: *
 
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Timble said:
I know an Ancient Egyptian cure for a headache that involves typing a faience (type of ceramic) crocodile to your heard with a piece of papyrus with a prayer to the gods.
Did they have typewriters in those days? :madeyes:
 
rynner said:
Timble said:
I know an Ancient Egyptian cure for a headache that involves typing a faience (type of ceramic) crocodile to your heard with a piece of papyrus with a prayer to the gods.
Did they have typewriters in those days? :madeyes:

No, but then an ancient Egyptian scribe wouldn't have made a typo like that either :oops:
 
Didn't they use dung as a contraceptive, also?
 
:eek:
sort of a pre-emptive contraceptive, I'm guessing.
 
Crocodile dung pessaries, wasn't it? :cross eye
 
crocodile dung contraceptive

Yea, crocodile dung has the perfect pH to serve as a spermicide... yuck
 
Re: crocodile dung contraceptive

anthrochick said:
Yea, crocodile dung has the perfect pH to serve as a spermicide... yuck

Who in the name of the sweet and loving Christ found that out? I'm assuming the first time it was an accident, so what the hell were they up to?

Ancient Egyptian croco-coprophiliacs? :wtf:
 
Hunt for ancient medicine secrets

Researchers will examine plant extracts found in ancient tombs
British scientists are helping uncover the secrets of medicines used by the ancient Egyptians 5,000 years ago.
A University of Manchester team is travelling to Sinai, Egypt, to shed more light on how the Egyptians formed their ideas on medicines.

They will compare modern plant species in the region with those used by tribes, such as the Bedouin, and plant remains found in ancient tombs.

The project is being carried out by the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology.

Researcher Dr Ryan Metcalf told BBC News: "Ancient Egyptians' medicine was remarkably advanced for its time. A lot of things they used we still use today.

"They certainly had some quite advanced herbal medicines and probably knew about cannabis as well for pain relief."

Biodiversity project

Dr Metcalf said the Egyptians used natural remedies, such as chewing willow bark - which contains properties similar to aspirin - and honey on open wounds to kill bacteria.

The focus of the project will be trying to find out where they got their ideas from.

"We know that the ancient Egyptians had extensive trade routes and it is entirely possible that both medicinal plants and the knowledge to use them effectively were traded between regions and countries," Dr Metcalf said.

"By comparing the prescriptions in the medical papyri to the medicinal plant use of the indigenous Bedouin people we hope to determine the origins of Pharaonic medicine."

Papyri, the forerunner of modern paper, is sheets of laminated material made from thin strips of the Cyprus Papyrus plant.

Researchers will work with the Egyptian Medicinal Plant Conservation Project in St Katherine's, Sinai, which is working to preserve the biodiversity of the region through co-operation with local Bedouin.

They will be able to supply the Manchester team with seeds and information that covers the Sinai peninsula.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engl ... 312255.stm
 
I don't believe I'd ever encountered mention of this massage technique before ... Because it uses fire, there's a temptation to compare it with Asian moxibustion practices. However, I haven't found any substantive overlaps or parallels between the two therapeutic practices.
Egyptian masseur plays with fire to ease muscle pain

An Egyptian masseur plays with fire to relieve his clients’ muscle pain at his spa in the Nile Delta governorate of Gharbeya.


Abdel Rehim Saeid, 35, applies the ancient Pharaonic technique, known as the “fiery towel” by starting with a standard massage, using oil and camomile, to stimulate blood circulation and alleviate some of the pain in affected areas.

Then comes the heat.

Saeid places several layers of towels and other isolating materials on the client’s back. Then a towel soaked in alcohol is placed on top and set on fire. It burns for roughly a minute before the flames are put out with a wet towel.

“It is ...called a fiery massage,” Saeid said, that works by sucking moisture out of the body.

“I communicate with the human body, coming into close contact with the body of the human in front of me,” he said.

Saeid said he cannot use the technique with people suffering from high blood pressure, kidney failure or haemophilia. ...

He said he trained under an expert in the fiery towel technique in Morocco, and had earned several massage certifications from institutions in Egypt.

Mohammed al-Shaer, a client in his 30s, said his pain had improved “100%” after the fiery treatment.

“Before, I could not stand to pray. I couldn’t stretch my back when I got out of a car,” he said. “Now, after the second session, my body is getting better and my movement is better. I used to be very lazy but this is no longer the case.”
SOURCE: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-with-fire-to-ease-muscle-pain-idUSKCN1VX1NE
 
I've seen clips of burning towels on the face in China. I recall the idea was to cleanse the facial skin though.
I'm still not sure what I am supposed to do with the hot towel they give you on airplanes.
 
I've seen clips of burning towels on the face in China. I recall the idea was to cleanse the facial skin though.
I'm still not sure what I am supposed to do with the hot towel they give you on airplanes.

The only hot towels I'm ever offered are at the curry house after they've finished stuffing you full of fiery goodness. I rub it all over my sweaty face and neck and maybe my grubby ear'oles.
 
An ancient Egyptian 'piss test' for pregnancy disseminated in other medical traditions and continued to be used for a millennium or more ...
Egyptian Papyrus Reveals This Old Wives’ Tale Is Very Old Indeed

The “Wheat and Barley” pregnancy test described in a recently translated medical text has been practiced for thousands of years

Throughout history, cultures around the world have come up with lots of folk prognostications for predicting the sex assigned at birth. ... As it turns out, this type of fortune-telling has been around for even longer than researchers thought; Bonnie Burton at CNET reports that a newly deciphered 3,500-year-old Egyptian papyrus details a relatively elaborate way to find out a baby’s sex.

The trick comes from the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection held at the University of Copenhagen. Though the trove of ancient documents were purchased and collected in the 1930s, many of the documents and scraps of documents have yet to be translated or published. ...

The documents have revealed some interesting details about the Egyptians. For instance, while researchers believed the civilization was not aware of the function of the kidneys, the papyri show that Egyptian were, indeed, conscious of the organs and, in fact, were the first known people to write about them in a medical text.

The 3,500-year-old medical text that includes a process for determining pregnancy and the sex of a baby was also among the trove. To find out, the woman must first urinate into a bag of wheat and a bag of barley. The bag that sprouts first will reveal the pregnancy—barley for boys, wheat for girls, though there is some controversy over the exact grains used and which grain signifies which sex. If neither bag sprouts, it means the woman is not pregnant.

Egyptologists had heard about this test from another papyrus held at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, but the latest version shows just how widespread the belief was. In a journal article in Clinical Chemistry, Glenn Braunstein describes the wheat and barley test as the first home pregnancy test and a concept that led to the “piss prophets” of the Middle Ages ...

In fact, the barley and wheat test itself was extremely long lasting. Sofie Schiødt, the University of Copenhagen Egyptology graduate student who translated the text, says that the test appears in a book of German folklore as late as 1699, and according to one source, was still in practice in Asia Minor in the 1960s. “Many of the ideas in the medical texts from Ancient Egypt appear again in later Greek and Roman texts. From here, they spread further to the medieval medical texts in the Middle East, and you can find traces all the way up to premodern medicine,” she tells Brix of Science Nordic. “That really puts things into perspective, as it shows that the Egyptian ideas have left traces thousands of years later.”

So is there any science behind the ancient test? According to the National Institutes of Health, in 1963 researchers decided to try out the method. In a study published in the journal Medical History they found that wheat and barley watered with urine from men and non-pregnant women kept the grains from sprouting. But in about 70 percent of the cases, the urine from pregnant women did cause the grain to sprout. The test, however, did not accurately predict the sex of the children. It’s possible that increased estrogen levels in the urine could have helped stimulate the seeds. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ld-wives-tale-very-very-old-indeed-180970066/
 
I know an Ancient Egyptian cure for a headache that involves tieing a faience (type of ceramic) crocodile to your head with a piece of papyrus with a prayer to the gods. They also used crocodile droppings in some or their medicines. :err:

*I meant head, not heard, obviously, and tieing not typing :oops: *
The Sioux and other Native North Americans used a similar technique.
 
I've seen clips of burning towels on the face in China. I recall the idea was to cleanse the facial skin though.
I'm still not sure what I am supposed to do with the hot towel they give you on airplanes.
i always sneak to the toilet give my fanny a wipe, if the the Stewardess ' are hot, you never know ;) x
 
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