Greek And Egyptian Medicine: Compare And Contrast Report

Medicine has changed over the centuries. At the beginning of the history of medicine, people believe that diseases was a symptom of imbalance in the body as a result of actions of an external agent, such as bad air or demons. Greek and Egyptian believe that diseases come from Gods as a way of punishment of bad behavior. But through the years this idea medicine began to change. People start to study human body and their anatomy to discover and cure of illness. Greek and Egyptian had similar beliefs on illness and treatments. According Ancient Medicine, “Greek and Egyptian believed that illness and diseases were divine punishment send by unhappy Gods or from evil spirit and pray were the first line of defense.” (Hippocratic Corpus, 1) One

He is considered the “Father of Western Medicine” Hippocratic belief that illness were not caused by superstition. He believed that caused by environmental factors, age, living habits and the imbalance in the body. Hippocratic had a theory called humoral medicine.This theory was based on climate and environment conditions make some diseases more likely. This theory was based on the body’s balance that was composed by four humors. These four humors were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Base on Hippocratic, “each humor was associated with two qualities: hot/cold and wet/dry. Blood was hot and wet, phlegm was cold and wet, black bile was cold and dry and yellow bile was hot and dry.” (Hippocratic,

People still belief in natural and spiritual remedies to cure people. One of the most important advances during that time was the Canon by Sina and De Fabrica Vesalius’s textbooks. The Canon’s textbooks was organized into 5 sections best known as “organized encyclopedia of medical knowledge.” And had influences of the European and Islamic Empires. Canon’s textbooks recognized that tuberculosis can also be transfer via dirt and water. Base on Canon and fabrica, “Cancer resulted from increase in heat in black bile.” They use surgery on cancerous tumor to stop future increasing or spreading of the diseases. First half of the Canon’s textbooks focus on causes of the diseases. Another important discovery was the describe and characterize meningitis as a disease. Second half of this textbooks, focuses on the first organs and were to attack the virus. Other Another part of the textbooks was based on who to stay healthy. And the last part focus on remedies to cure the diseases. According to Cannon and fabrica, “These textbooks also contains 760 drugs and methods for mixing or creating.” (Cannon,