The strangest medical treatments in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian physicians were among the most respected medical professionals in the ancient world. The Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote around 440 BCE, noted that rulers such as Cyrus and Darius of Persia had employed Egyptian doctors, and that Greek physicians including Hippocrates had later studied at Egyptian temples.
This reputation was built on thousands of years of accumulated knowledge that was recorded on papyrus scrolls that have survived to the present day.
The most important of these is the Ebers Papyrus, a 20-metre-long document that was dated to around 1550 BCE, which contains over 800 remedies for conditions that ranged from crocodile bites to toenail infections.
Many of those remedies were genuinely effective. Honey was used extensively in wound care, and modern science has confirmed its antimicrobial properties.
Willow bark was prescribed for inflammation, since it contains salicylic acid, the active compound that is found in aspirin.
The medical papyri are also filled with treatments that are, by any modern standard, extraordinarily strange, because Egyptian doctors saw no contradiction when they combined practical remedies and magical spells as well as animal excrement.
Channels and demons: the logic of illness
Egyptian physicians believed the body operated through a system of channels that were called metu, which carried blood, air, water and other fluids throughout the body.
They understood, correctly, that the heart was the centre of the blood supply and that vessels ran outward from it.
They also believed these channels could become blocked by wekhedu, a putrefying matter that caused illness.
This theory was drawn directly from observation of the Nile: just as the river could become obstructed, so too could the body’s internal waterways.
On top of this physical model, the Egyptians held that gods and demons as well as spirits could cause disease by entering the body or by cursing the afflicted person.
A physician who was known as a swnw was expected to address both physical and supernatural causes of illness.
A single treatment might include a herbal poultice that was applied to the skin and an incantation that was chanted over the patient, as well as an amulet that was placed on the body for spiritual protection.
Crocodile dung and the art of contraception
One of the most frequently cited examples of strange Egyptian medicine is the use of crocodile dung as a contraceptive.
The Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, which was dated to around 1800 BCE, contains instructions for inserting a mixture of crocodile excrement and a paste-like substance into the vagina to prevent pregnancy.
The Ebers Papyrus adds another recipe: a blend of honey and dates as well as acacia juice that was applied to wool and inserted in the same manner.
As revolting as the crocodile dung method sounds, modern researchers have pointed out that it may have had some basis in chemistry.
Crocodile excrement is slightly alkaline, a property that it shares with modern spermicides.
The acacia-based recipe is even more interesting, because fermented acacia tips produce lactic acid, a common active ingredient in contemporary spermicidal creams.
The Egyptians did not understand the chemistry, but through centuries of trial and observation, they stumbled onto ingredients with genuine contraceptive properties.
A crocodile on your head for migraines
The Ebers Papyrus contains a migraine remedy that has become one of the most discussed treatments in the history of ancient medicine.
The instructions describe making a clay effigy of a crocodile and stuffing its mouth with herbs, as well as binding it tightly to the patient’s head with a linen strip that was inscribed with the names of Egyptian gods.
This treatment combined two elements that Egyptian physicians considered essential: a physical remedy, in the form of herbs that were pressed against the skull, and a magical component, in the form of the crocodile figure and the invocation of the gods.
The crocodile was associated with Sobek, a god who held power over water and fertility, and the Egyptians believed that transferring the qualities of a powerful animal to the patient could drive out the spirit that was causing the pain.
Blood and dung: the treatment of eye disease
Eye conditions were common in ancient Egypt, likely because of the dry, dusty climate.
The treatments that were prescribed for these conditions are among the most unsettling in the medical papyri.
For trichiasis, a condition where the eyelashes grow inward and scratch the eye’s surface, the Ebers Papyrus recommends tearing out the offending hairs and applying a mixture of myrrh and lizard blood as well as bat blood.
To prevent regrowth, the physician was to prepare a paste of incense that was ground in lizard dung and that was combined with blood that was collected from cows, donkeys, pigs, dogs and stags.
The treatment for blindness was stranger still. The physician was instructed to take the eyes of a pig, remove the water from them, mix them with honey and red lead as well as true collyrium, grind the mixture into a powder, and inject it into the patient’s ear.
During preparation, the physician had to recite an incantation: ‘I have brought this thing and put it in its place. The crocodile is weak and powerless.’
The logic was almost entirely magical, and was based on the idea that the pig’s eyes would transfer their sight to the patient through sympathetic connection.
Mouldy bread and the accidental antibiotic
Not all of the strange-sounding remedies were ineffective. The medical papyri describe the application of mouldy bread to infected wounds.
Certain moulds that grow on bread can belong to the Penicillium family, the same genus of fungi from which Alexander Fleming derived penicillin in 1928.
The Egyptians arguably had little understanding of microbiology, but they observed that wounds that were treated with mouldy bread sometimes healed better than those that were left untreated.
The Ebers Papyrus also records the use of yeast from sweet beer as a wound dressing, which some modern scholars consider the earliest documented use of yeast as an antibiotic.
Fresh meat was placed on simple wounds first, followed by a seal of oil and honey, then wrapped in linen.
For burns, the papyri recommend goat’s dung that was mixed with fermenting yeast.
Honey, which was used in almost every recipe, turns out to have been ideal for wound care because bacteria cannot grow in it.
These remedies were arrived at through observation rather than theory, and they anticipated discoveries that would not occur in the Western world for another three thousand years.
Making sense of the strange
It is easy to laugh at the idea of strapping a clay crocodile to someone’s head or injecting powdered pig eyes into their ears.
From a modern perspective, these treatments are absurd. For the Egyptians, however, medicine was inseparable from religion and magic.
They lived in a world where the gods controlled health and disease, and where the correct incantation mattered as much as the correct poultice.
Their physicians were often priests as well as doctors, who were trained in temples that were known as Houses of Life, where medical knowledge was passed down alongside religious instruction.
What is remarkable is how often the Egyptians got things right. Research that was published in The Lancet has estimated that roughly 64 per cent of the drug sources that were used by ancient Egyptian physicians are still in use today, many of which are now produced synthetically.
Their wound care techniques and understanding of the circulatory system were significantly ahead of their time.
The strangest treatments in the Egyptian medical tradition existed alongside treatments that were genuinely effective, and the Egyptians did not separate science from superstition.
That is what makes their medical records so unusual and so instructive.