ASSYRIAN AND BABYLONIAN MEDICINE
OF equally great importance in the evolution of medicine was the
practically contemporary civilization in Mesopotamia. Science here
reached a much higher stage then in the valley of the Nile. An elaborate
scheme of the universe was devised, a system growing out of the
Divine Will, and a recognition for the first time of a law guiding
and controlling heaven and earth alike. Here, too, we find medicine
ancillary to religion. Disease was due to evil spirits or demons. "These
'demons'--invisible to the naked eye were the precursors of the modern
'germs' and 'microbes,' while the incantations recited by the priests
are the early equivalents of the physician's prescriptions. There
were different incantations for different diseases; and they were
as mysterious to the masses as are the mystic formulas of the modern
physician to the bewildered, yet trusting, patient. Indeed, their
mysterious character added to the power supposed to reside in the
incantations for driving the demons away. Medicinal remedies accompanied
the recital of the incantations, but despite the considerable progress
made by such nations of hoary antiquity as the Egyptians and Babylonians
in the diagnosis and treatment of common diseases, leading in time to
the development of an extensive pharmacology, so long as the cure
of disease rested with the priests, the recital of sacred formulas,
together with rites that may be conveniently grouped under the head of
sympathetic magic, was regarded as equally essential with the taking of
the prescribed remedies.
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