Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts - Guide to the Exhibition

of fertility. The trephined skull of a woman (No. 11), which is from the times when Hungarian tribes conquered the Carpathian Basin (c. 896. A.D.), is an interesting find from the point of medical history. The re-grown of the bone tissues around the trepanation hole proves that the patient managed to survive the dangerous operation. The curare is a herbal extract originated in the today Venezuela. It was usually kept in hollowed or scooped pumpkins. Medically, it has a double effect on human body, when in the viscera (bowels) it works as a spasmolytic liquid, whereas injected into the vascular system it is a deadly poison. The latter was exactly why the native tribes of Amazonia had invented it. The tsantsa, is a contracted skull used by the Indians of South-America as a fetish. The skull of the killed enemy was shrank, slung over the warriors neck or shoulder and was regarded to be magically potent. The so called diagnostic bones and the drugs of a witch-doctor (medicine man) (No.l), from South-Africa, represent the method of healing among Bantu tribes hundreds of years ago. The pulverized drug was kept in a goat horn (No.6) obviously in order to preserve it dry. We show furthermore, a mask (No.3) that was used for expelling diseases from human body and a snake-fetish (No.4) made of gazelle horn. 2. Medicine in the Ancient Orient The written history of medicine begins with the tcrra-cotta tablets (ostrakas

) of Babylon and the Old-Egyptian medical papyri. It would be quite logical to suppose that the high standard of mummification required a detailed exploration of the secrets of human body, therefore it must have had a beneficial effect on Egyptian anatomy. Nevertheless, according to Egyptian thought, the priests of Sechmet, who stood for medical profession along the Lower Nile, did consider the dead body unclean, so they kept away from disscction and from all stages of mummification processes. These were carried out by specialists instead, the embabners, who lived in separated communities, mind you, in the necropolis. The embalmers lacked medical education and were unable to apply their knowledge of the human body to curing. Paradoxically, the physicians had collected all their anatomical perception from animal dissections. The head of a mummy in the middle of the show-case is from the Ptolemaic age. It has been very well preserved: the eyes are still in the eye-hole, and there is not any sign of artificial operation on the skull that would uncover that the brain had been dissected. In ancicnt Egypt medical profession and magic were hardly separated. The goal of mummification was a magical preparation for transcendental life. There are five amulets in the ease. The first one, out of the four that are placed in a line (No.

14), is an Ujat-eye that were used for protection against the witch's malevolent look. The next one (No. 16), modeling a heart, symbolises the blood of Isis. The so called Jed-pillar (No. 15) represents the backbone of Osiris and was 28