The most recent edition of the BBC Radio 4 science programme had a fascinating item on Ancient Egyptian medicine. If you go to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld.shtml

you will be able to listen to the programme. But you have to go quickly because they only make it available for a week after broadcast.

Of course, 4000 years ago, much of medicine was about the use of herbs. It is only in the last century that medicine and herbalism have been at loggerheads despite the fact that the majority of today's medicines have been derived from herbs.

So, Egyptian medicine is all about herbs except, perhaps for their use of crocodile dung as a contraceptive. I can see that this could be effective!

Ryan Metcalfe and Jackie Campbell of Manchester University have been studying manuscripts from the Sinai which contain over 1000 prescriptions which are given in enough detail that they can be replicated today. Obviously, translation is a problem because of the difficulty of relating the cited herb to the herbs we use today. Luckily, many of these herbs were stored in the tombs for use by the deceased in the afterlife. Using these comparisons and information on the herbs available in the area, the researchers reckon that are now about 70% correct in translating the Egyptian herbs to those we know today.

Interestingly, many of the Egyptian treatments are the same as we might recommend today. These include

- Castor oil, figs and bran as a laxative.
- Saffron and celery to ease rheumatism
- Extracts from ballonite (???) tree to treat bilharzia
- Cumin and coriander as a calmative

And they added refinements like using hyoscymus to reduce the side effects from using colosynth as a laxative

This story, changes the commonly accepted view that real medicine started on Greece. It is suggested in the programme that this misconception has arisen because we could translate Greek texts much earlier than we could translate the Egyptian texts.

I have written this from listening to the programme, rather than having the text in front of me, so I may have got some details and spellings wrong.

David

I've just listened to the broadcast and the tree effective against bilharzia is the balanite tree (Balanites aegyptiaca).

I meention this as we had a post from someone working in Africa, who wanted to use indigenous plants.

Audrey

Thank you both for this information - it was I who posted regarding using herbs in Africa (Uganda specifically). We have been away for a week, and I've not caught up with myself yet, but I will certainly try to listen to the programme over the next couple of days, and thanks Audrey for the hint re bilharzia.

You may like to know that I have started off on my long journey to becoming acquainted with and using Ugandan herbs. I've signed up for and commenced the Discovering Herbal Medicine course. I have a very long way to go!!

Best wishes
Sue