This Bible History Daily article was originally published in 2013.—Ed.
Many Emergency Medical Service departments use the Star of Life - an image which is derived from ancient images of Asklepios. Snakes were believed to be sacred to the god, and he was often depicted as a bearded man with a walking staff that was entwined with serpents.
In many societies, the gods played an integral role in human health. In the Greek world, the god Asklepios was dedicated exclusively to healing.a Sanctuaries called Asklepions drew the ill and injured, who would often travel for days to seek the healing that they believed these ancient sanitariums could provide. Similar in some ways to the modern spa, Asklepions provided baths, healthy foods and sanctuary rooms intended specifically for sleep and meditation. Most Asklepions were located in remote and beautiful areas, such as the famous sanctuaries of Epidauros in Greece and Pergamon in northwest Turkey. Animal sacrifices and votive offerings were made at altars and temples to the god. Excavations at Asklepions have uncovered “anatomical votives,” so named because they represent the body part that was injured or affected by illness.
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This gilded bronze ear was presented to the Asklepion at ancient Pergamon by a woman named Fabia Secunda, who had in made “for the god Asklepios because the ear was healed in a dream.”
This first-century A.D. relief of a leg was dedicated by a man named Tycheas as “a thank-offering to Asklepios and Hygeia” at the Asklepion on the island of Melos, Greece. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library.
By the seventh century A.D., medicine as a science that was relatively independent of religious restrictions had virtually disappeared in the west, as the use of cadavers for scientific dissection had been prohibited by the Church. However, Islamic scholars in the East were studying Greek medicine in depth.c Herbs such as henbane and Indian hemp (related to marijuana) were known for their anesthetic properties, and physicians stressed the effects of diet and environment on health. Perhaps one of the most famous eastern physicians was Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn Sina (980–1037 A.D.), whose work The Canon of Medicine codified existing medical knowledge. The Canon includes descriptions, causes and diagnostic techniques for conditions such as rabies, stomach ulcers, different types of hepatitis, breast cancer, facial paralysis, diphtheria, leprosy, diabetes, cancer and gout. Later translations Latinized his name to Avicenna, and by the 13th century his work had become the standard medical reference text throughout Western Europe.
Watch author Sarah Yeomans as she lectures on “Doctors, Diseases and Deities: Epidemic Crises and Medicine in Ancient Rome.”
This first-century A.D. ceramic votive depicts an image of a uterus; it was probably dedicated by a woman in hopes of conceiving. Such a representation demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of both the anatomy and function of internal organs. Photo: British Museum.
A scarred skull demonstrates evidence of trephination, a surgical technique in which holes were drilled in the patient’s skull to relieve intracranial pressure caused by head trauma. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority.
Archaeology has further illuminated medical practices in the ancient world. Certain skeletons discovered during excavations demonstrate evidence of rather astonishing surgical successes. Perhaps the most startling evidence of sophisticated ancient surgery can be found in skulls that show signs of trepanation, a procedure still used today that is performed by drilling a hole into the skull to relieve intracranial pressure. Trepanated skulls from ancient societies in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Near and Middle East have been found that perhaps date back as far as the Mesolithic period, about 12,000 years ago.2 By examining the bone regrowth around the surgical hole in the skull, scientists are able to determine how long the patient survived after undergoing the procedure. Some patients died immediately, some lived only a few weeks, but others seem to have healed completely.
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A 2.5 millimeter bronze wire (indicated by an arrow) in this tooth’s canal is evidence of early dentistry. Discovered in a mass grave at Horvat En Ziq, a small Nabatean fortress in the northern Negev desert in Israel, the incisor contains one of the earliest known fillings, dating to about 200 B.C.E. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority.
Ironically, it is often the funerary monuments and graves of ancient doctors that attest to their care of the living. Tablets that decorated funerary altars of physicians often depicted the instruments of their profession—objects that look remarkably similar to instruments used by surgeons today. Scalpels, forceps, forked probes for examining wounds, needles for stitching wounds, small spoons for cleaning wounds and measuring medicines, catheters and even gynecological specula are all examples of instruments employed by the medical doctors of antiquity.
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Of course, calling on a higher power for assistance during a physical trial or illness was as common in the ancient world as it is today. Many modern hospitals have nondenominational worship spaces where people can pray and meditate; people in antiquity visited shrines and temples to do the same. Individuals preparing to undergo dangerous ordeals such as childbirth or battle would often invoke the protection of the divine. Even as medical science continues to evolve, the contemplation of mortality will likely continue to cause humans to look beyond the known for the explanations that even modern science cannot yet provide.
This array of bronze surgical instruments, from a private collection in Jerusalem, dates from 40 B.C.E. to 400 C.E. and includes spoons used to scrape out wounds (lower right), a forked probe (among the spoons), knife and scalpel handles (center, their iron blades have disintegrated), spatula probes for working in wounds (lower left), forceps (upper left), hooks used to hold the skin back (left of center), and cyathisconele, cupped tools used to clean wounds (top center). Photo: Zev Radovan.
“Medicine in the Ancient World” by Sarah Yeomans was originally published in November 2013.
Sarah Yeomans is Director of Educational Programs at the Biblical Archaeology Society in Washington, D.C. She is an archaeologist specializing in the Imperial period of the Roman Empire with a particular emphasis on religions and ancient science. Yeomans is a faculty member in the department of religious studies at West Virginia University. In addition, she is pursuing her doctorate at the University of Southern California, where she is a Provost Fellow, and is a Mayers Fellow at the Huntington Library and Museum in Los Angeles. Yeomans holds an M.A. in archaeology from the University of Sheffield, England, and an M.A. in art history from USC. She has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Israel, Italy, Turkey, France and England and has worked on several television and film productions, most recently as an interviewed expert on Fox’s The Nativity: Facts, Fiction and Faith. Her current research involves ancient Roman medical technology and cult, as well as the impact of epidemics on Roman society. She is generally happiest when covered in dirt, roaming archaeological sites somewhere in the Mediterranean region.Notes
a. Bronwen Wickkiser, “Asklepios Appears in a Dream,” Archaeology Odyssey, July/August 2005.
b. George B. Griffenhagen, “Origins: On the Pill,” Archaeology Odyssey, May/June 2002.
c. David W. Tschanz, “Origins: A Cure for the Common Cold?” Archaeology Odyssey, Summer 1998.
d. Hector Avolos, “Ancient Medicine,” Bible Review, June 1995.
1. See Galen, Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, trans. by Margaret Tallmadge May (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968) and A. Sorsby, A. Modern Ophthalmology (London: Butterworths, 1963).
2. See S. Missios, “Hippocrates, Galen, and the Uses of Trepanation in the Ancient Classical World,” Neurosurgical Focus 23(1):E11 (2007); P. Marino and M. Gonzales-Portillo,” Preconquest Peruvian Neurosurgeons: A Study of Inca and Pre-Columbian Trephination and the Art of Medicine in Ancient Peru” Neurology 47:4, (2000), pp. 940–955.
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To be honest, I am shocked to discover the myth of “dissection of corpse banned by the church only after 6th century” is reiterated in this supposedly scholarly article. Galen never dissect human corpse, because it is forbidden under Roman law, and his research is consequently limited to ape dissection. Human corpse dissection was forbidden for most of the time during the Greco-Roman era except the early 3rd century BCE Alexandria. There was never a universal ban on dissection in medieval Europe. The Europeans had performed significant numbers of human dissections, especially postmortem autopsies during this era.
reference: The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West