The Ancient Egyptian Doctors received some practical experience but the main source of their learning was the medical texts written by earlier physicians. The doctors used these medical texts for learning as well as a protector against failures.

Categories of Ancient Egypt Practitioners Doctors

Doctors were mostly priests or scribes. Doctors enjoyed religious as well as lay titles. Doctors had their own chain of command. There were ordinary physicians, senior physicians, inspectors and they also had a health minister.

Each doctor from Ancient Egypt used to treat only one ailment. This shows that there was a certain degree of specialization. Some doctors were dentists, some used to check head injuries, some abdominal diseases, some used to check eyes and some of them for concealed maladies. This profession was practiced by people belonging to the higher strata of society.

The Ancient Egyptian Doctors were called ‘wabau’.

Masters of Human Anatomy

The modern term of ‘medical semiology’ was described by the doctors of Ancient Egypt. They used modern methods to get information from the patient’s body. These were inspection, palpitation, and auscultation.

The Ancient Egypt Doctors were the masters of human anatomy. They used bandages very skillfully for treating wounds of their patients. This knowledge of applying bandages was inherited from mummification. Mummification was very important for them as they believed that the dead had recognized its own body and occupy it to get “life after life”.

They did not remove organs such as heart and liver during reincarnation. These organs had to be replaced with beetle-shaped amulet if these were damaged before mummification or during the process of mummification.

Imhotep was considered the ‘God of Medicine’.

Beliefs of ancient Egyptian Doctors

River Nile was an integral part of Ancient Egyptian society. The doctors also based their practical theory on the observations from this river. The doctors believed that the cause of illness was the rotting food inside the stomach of the ill patient.

Such patients suffering from illness were given laxatics to relax their intestines and clear their blockage. Sometimes they were also given emetics to vomit. The ingredients for their medicines included salt, honey, and dates.

The doctors of Ancient Egyptian society were very religious. They combined their profession with religious beliefs. Their civilization, trades with other civilizations and written records allowed them to investigate the illness further.

These investigations prompted them to develop new techniques for treatment of illness. They recorded these rational treatment methods in records so as to pass on the knowledge to the younger generations of doctors. In all this, they still believed that God played an important role in causing and curing illness.

We can conclude by saying that the Ancient Egypt Practitioners Doctors were in a way the pioneers of modern ways of treatment which are practiced by doctors in the 20th and 21st centuries.