Ebers Medical Papyrus
Illness has many causes and remedies, medical, magical, and religious together, and a physician's competence lies in knowing which to apply to a given complaint.
- the longest surviving Egyptian medical compendium
- magical and pharmacological remedies combined without contradiction
- an early theory of the heart and vessels as a bodily system
- dated by an internal regnal-year note
The longest surviving Egyptian medical papyrus, roughly 110 pages of remedies, incantations, and diagnoses covering ailments from digestive disorders to skin disease, parasites, and gynecology, with a lengthy section on the heart and vessels that treats it as the center of a body-wide circulatory system. Unlike the Edwin Smith papyrus, its cures mix practical pharmacology freely with spoken spells and appeals to gods. Dated by an internal note to the ninth regnal year of Amenhotep I, it was purchased by Georg Ebers in 1873.
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