How Different Was Greek To Egyptian Medicine?

950 Words4 Pages
How different was Greek to Egyptian medicine? Greek medicine was completely different to Egyptian medicine, but not necessarily. Greek and Egyptian medicine had many similarities and differences. Both had explanations and cures. In this essay I will be contrasting and comparing ancient Egypt and Greek medicine. In fact there are many differences from Greek medicine to Egyptian. For instance the Greeks believed in the 4 humours. The Theory of the Four Humours was an important development in medical knowledge. The Greeks believed that the body was made up of four main components or Four Humours. These Four Humours needed to remain balanced in order for people to remain healthy. The Four Humours were liquids within the body- blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Hippocrates and other Greek practitioners argued that the balance of the Four humours would be most effected in those particular seasons. For example, if someone has a fever they would have been thought to have had too much blood in their body. The logical cure therefore is to 'bleed' the patient. Use of the Four Humours as a diagnostic tool would result in doctors looking for symptoms: the first time that clinical observation of a patient was recorded. On the other hand ancient Egyptians believed there were channels in the body. The Egyptians developed a theory of physiology that saw the heart as the centre of a system of ‘channels'. They failed, though, to realise that the different tubes (veins, intestines, lungs etc) had specific purposes. Their system is called the Channel Theory. Having observed the damage done to farmers' fields when an irrigation channel became blocked, the Egyptians developed the idea that disease occurred when an evil spirit had possessed you it blocked one of the body's 'channels'. This was a crucial breakthrough in the history of medicine, because it led doctors to
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