When I was younger, in my village, in some cases when someone had a high fever, the person will be given a hot tea with Lantana flowers (infused) to drop the fever; it was very efficient. Now, not all Lantana plants were used, there was a particular species of it… but I love the idea of using our own medicinal herbs for our use. So it is a mistake today, after having had the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus, or the Ebers papyrus centuries ago, to assume or act as if African traditional medicine is all bogus or full of charlatanism, and that the only alternatives for us Africans, are the pills that we buy in pharmacy made abroad in some laboratories in the Western hemisphere to address mostly their needs with no respect for our environments and realities. I am not saying to go out and cut all the plants out there, or not to buy drugs in pharmacies, but I am saying that African traditional medicine is rich, and we should also cherish and enhance it. I am sure there is so much that African herbs and medicine could add to the world. We just have to develop it, and to develop it, we need to start cherishing and valuing what we have, not leaving that to Western tourists on visit to claim to have discovered something that was ours and was there all along! African, start loving who you are, appreciating what you have, and enhancing what nature gave you (when it is good, of course)!
Kahun Gynecological Papyrus: Page 1 and part of Page 2
Today, we will be talking about the Kahun Papyrus, which is among the oldest and most important medical papyri of Ancient Egypt and of the world. This is a papyrus dealing with women’s health – gynecological diseases, fertility, pregnancy, and contraception; it dates back to the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt, c. 1800 BCE. It is a three page document, 1 m long and about 33 cm wide. The name Amenemhet III was written in the right upper corner behind third page name. The document was torn in places and patched with gum and papyrus.
Head of Pharaoh Sobekneferu. British Museum
It was found at El-Lahun (Faiyum, Egypt) by Flinders Petrie in 1889 and first translated by F. Ll. Griffith in 1893 and published in The Petrie Papyri: Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob. The later Berlin Papyrus and the Ramesseum Papyrus IV cover much of the same ground, often giving identical prescriptions. ‘Kahun’ is the name Petrie gave to the Lehun town site, which in 1825 BC had been a thriving, prosperous town; the name was probably a misspelling from this European in contact with a foreign language (see Abidjan). The papyrus had been so heavily used that its ancient owner had to repair it, with a patch bearing an administrative fragment visible at one point on the back. This gynecological papyrus originates from the Middle Kingdom (Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt) to the reign of the childless female-king Sobekneferu, whose interest in gynecology might have been sparked by her elder sister dying at an early age.
The text is divided into thirty-four sections, each section dealing with a specific problem and containing diagnosis and treatment; no prognosis is suggested. Treatments are non-surgical, comprising of the application of medicines to the affected body part or swallowing them. The womb is at times seen as the source of complaints manifesting themselves in other body parts.
Kahun Gynecological Papyrus, part of page 2 and Page 3
The first seventeen parts have a common format starting with a title and are followed by a brief description of the symptoms, usually, though not always, having to do with the reproductive organs. The second section begins on the third page, and comprises eight paragraphs which, because of both the state of the extant copy and the language, are almost unintelligible. Despite this, there are several paragraphs that have a sufficiently clear level of language as well as being intact which can be understood.
Paragraph 19 is concerned with the recognition of who will give birth; paragraph 20 is concerned with the fumigation procedure which causes conception to occur; and paragraphs 20-22 are concerned with contraception. Among those materials prescribed for contraception are crocodile dung, 45 ml of honey, and sour milk.
The third section (paragraphs 26-32) is concerned with the testing for pregnancy. Other methods include the placing of an onion bulb deep in the patients flesh, with the positive outcome being determined by the odor appearing to the patients nose.
Isis and Horus: Mother and child
The fourth and final section contains two paragraphs which do not fall into any of the previous categories. The first prescribes treatment for toothaches during pregnancy. The second describes what appears to be a fistula between bladder and vagina with incontinence of urine “in an irksome place.”
To learn more about it, check out “The Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus: Ancient Egyptican Medicine” by L. Smith, J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 37 (2011) 54. University College London also has an extensive page on the manuscript with its translation, as the manuscript for the health of mother and child.
Today, we will be talking about the Papyrus Ebers or Ebers Papyrus, which is among the oldest and mostimportantmedicalpapyri of Ancient Egypt and of the world. This papyrus is a medical papyrus of herbal knowledge, and dates back to c.1550 BC. It is believed to have been copied from earlier texts. It is 110-page scroll, and is about 20 m long. It is among the world’s oldest preserved medical documents.
From c. 33rd century BC until Persian invasion in 525 BC, Egyptian medicine remained one of the world’s most advanced, and was used in some non-invasive surgery, setting of bones, and an extensive set of pharmacopeia. Even Homer of the Odyssey recognized this when he said, “In Egypt, the men are more skilled in medicine than any of human kind” and “the Egyptians were skilled in medicine more than any other art“.
Georg Ebers
The Papyrus Ebers is one of the oldest medical papyri still well-preserved. It was given the name Ebers, after the man who purchased it in Luxor (Thebes) in the winter of 1873-74, Georg Ebers, a German Egyptologist and novelist. It is written in hieratic Egyptian writing and preserves the most voluminous record of ancient Egyptian medicine known. It contains about 700 magical formulas and remedies, for things such as asthma, evacuation of belly, bowels, birth control, guinea worms (this remedy is still the standard practice today, over 3500 years later), and even cancer. There is also a chapter titled Book of Hearts, which deals with mental disorders such as depression and dementia.
Ebers Papyrus – remedy for asthma
One of the most common remedies described in the papyrus is ochre, or medicinal clay, which was prescribed for intestinal and eye complaints. Yellow ochre was prescribed as a remedy for urological complaints.
The Papyrus Ebers is currently kept at the Leipzig University‘s library (Ebers was chair of the Egyptology department there) in Germany. If you are in Leipzig, go visit. Please check out the Ancient Egyptian Medicine website, which talks in details not only about the Ebers Papyrus, but also about other famous Papyri such as the Edwin Smith Papyrus (c. 1600 BC), the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus (c. 1800 BC), and herbal remedies, and nutrition of Ancient Egypt.
African Heritage 