The medical features of the Papyrus Ebers
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| The medical features of the Papyrus Ebers |
The costly manuscript was unfolded and on close inspection Ebers made the startling discovery that it was a document of great value and in an unusual condition of preservation.
Ebers says he can with difficulty de- scribe the impression that the precious, delightfully written and undamaged memorial made on him. The first lines on which his eyes fell belonged to a fragment of a calendar that he had known for a long time.
This little document, so very important to the Egyptian chronology, was years ago shown to the renowned Egyp-tologists, Diimchen, Naville, Brugsch, Bisenlohr, and in 1870 to Ebers himself, in a copy belonging to a Mr. Smith, an American inhabitant of Luxor, who main-tained that he was the possessor of an extensive medical papyrus. Because of an affection of the eyes contracted while copying inscriptions, Ebers could not study the Smith copies ; hence
Professor Eisenlohr of Heidelberg succeeded in obtaining a drawing (by means of tracing) of the fragment of calendar which was then regularly advertised in a periodical devoted to the Egyptian lan- guage and archseology, biit without success. Outside of the already-mentioned fragment of calen- dar, not a line of the papyrus was known. Mr. Smith claimed to have possessed a roll from which he had copied the fragment of the calendar, while, in reality, he possessed only a copy, which was the product of his own handwriting.
The Anglo-Saxon nations, though renowned for deep thinking and philosophizing in every branch of science and art, can not boast of a scholarship in bringing forth the first literature of the science of medicine.
A third of a century has elapsed since George Ebers revealed the pages on medicine which were written some seven thousand years ago, and which were concealed for nearly four thousand years between the legs of a mummy.
With the assistance of the learned Ludwig Stern and other Egyptologists, Ebers published the fact that Hippocrates of Cos, who for twenty-three hundred years has been known to the world as the "Father of Medicine,"
Delivered before the Thirtieth Annual Session of the American Academy of Medicine at Chicago, 1905.
Hermetic, which means compiled, or inspired by Thoth, was any work which was written by a priest according to the inspiration of the god, which would correspond excellently to the Ebers Papyrus.
However, Luring believes that the Ebers Papyrus is much older than the book, and argues that there are certain remarkable differential points between them. Whatever may be the truth, the value of the Ebers Papyrus is the same, be it the hermetic work or a compilation from writings of prominent physicians of the earliest ages.
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