{"id":12465,"date":"2024-02-04T23:37:03","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T04:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=12465"},"modified":"2024-02-04T23:42:28","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T04:42:28","slug":"the-ebers-papyrus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=12465","title":{"rendered":"The Ebers Papyrus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The illness of our cat Rufus made me read up on the subject of spontaneous remission. No, I do not cling to false rays of hope, I was simply curious: Does it really happen? How often?<\/p>\n

Long story short, Google soon led me to a study<\/a> mentioning the earliest known description of induced spontaneous remission: The Ebers Papyrus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Ebers Papyrus is a roughly 3500 years old document, essentially a medical textbook or at least notes. In addition to recipes for numerous remedies, it also contains descriptions of various illnesses, their diagnosis, and methods of treatment.<\/p>\n

Here is one example out of many:<\/p>\n

Experiential knowledge regarding an a’at<\/em> growth of fat: When you identify an a’at<\/em> growth of fat on any body part of a man (and) you find that it comes and goes under your fingers, and where it somehow can be permanently separated by your hand, then you say for this: “This is an a’at<\/em> growth of fat. A disease that I will treat.” Because of this you then prepare a knife-treatment for it. May it be treated according to the treatment of a wound!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I like it especially (assuming it is not a stylistic mistranslation) how the text instructs the physician-in-training to announce his diagnosis. It instills confidence, but also potentially invites questions or criticism before a treatment is attempted. And there’s no mumbo-jumbo, no superstition or religious mysticism: Facts are facts.<\/p>\n

From more than three thousand five hundred years ago.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The illness of our cat Rufus made me read up on the subject of spontaneous remission. No, I do not cling to false rays of hope, I was simply curious: Does it really happen? How often? Long story short, Google soon led me to a study mentioning the earliest known description of induced spontaneous remission: […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-history","category-29-id","category-25-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12465"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12470,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12465\/revisions\/12470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}