Our ideas about the Aesculapians of antiquity are so small that some of the facts that are revealed to modern man are simply shocking. So, it turns out, surgery existed in the Stone Age! And in Ancient Greece and Egypt, healers performed the most complex operations, which are rather difficult in our time.
Perhaps everything is explained by our relationship to the most ancient representatives of the human race. We used to think of them as cruel and merciless. Struggle for survival and hunger are all explanations. But the findings of archaeologists force us to reconsider our approach to ancient man.
One of the most striking examples that cast doubt on the assertion of scientists about the lifespan of ancient people is the find in the Shanidar cave - Northern Iraq. An archaeological expedition led by R. Solecki managed to find 9 male skeletons of Neanderthals who lived 60-30 thousand years ago. The skeleton of a 40-year-old disabled man was found in the burial.
What value was he to the tribe? The eye socket was damaged, perhaps he could not see, a healed fracture was found on the left foot, the left leg was disfigured by arthritis, and the teeth were completely erased! This radically changes the conviction of contemporaries that in ancient society there was no place for pity or mercy.
However, the most striking thing is that his left arm was missing. It became clear to the specialists who studied the skeleton that, possibly disfigured in a duel or by an attacking beast, it was amputated by an ancient surgeon, as evidenced by the characteristic rounded shape of the bone.
The incredible fact that a man of the Stone Age knew how to carry out operations is evidenced by another amazing find. At the end of the 20th century, not far from the French village of Ensisheim, archaeologists excavated 45 ancient burials with the remains of 47 people of the Stone Age.
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However, particular attention was drawn to the skeleton of a 50-year-old man, which had 2 neat holes in the skull. The absence of cracks near the hole indicated a surgical operation. The opening in the front part of the forehead was about 6 cm in diameter. And in the upper part of the skull there was another one, 2 centimeters wider, but undoubtedly also of surgical origin.
“Most of the holes in the skull are usually small and difficult to tell if they are the result of surgery or simply a fractured skull. But in our case, you can see the smooth, rounded edges of rather large trepanations, that is, these holes are clearly artificial,”says a participant in the excavation, archaeologist Sandra Pikhler from the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Unbelievable, but true: there were no infections or infections. The ancient patient underwent both operations well. This is evidenced by the growths over the operated sites: the frontal foramen is completely covered with a thin layer of bone, and the cranial foramen is half.
“So, these ancient people had a very good surgeon and some special ways of suppressing the infection,” Sandra Pikhler came to this conclusion. According to experts, it took about two years to heal the wounds. But the operation was carried out twice.
What caused the operations is not known. But they were carried out, apparently, with flint knives. They were not only not inferior in sharpness to modern scalpels, but also had a disinfecting effect - silicon particles did not allow bacteria to multiply.
“Trepanations are performed so skillfully that they cannot be called the most ancient. The surgeon had to have long-term practice. The fact of finding traces of two trepanations on one skull at once indirectly confirms this: if only one operation took place, one could say that the ancient surgeon was just lucky. But since the patient survived after the second operation, it means that the doctor had certain skills and knew what to do,”Pikhler said.
But the researcher of the ancient Incas Miloslav Stingle names among the most ancient medical instruments "bronze scalpels of various sizes, tweezers, needles, brackets, bronze knives" tumi ", resembling in their shape a kitchen knife-cut. And also the clamps with which the Inca doctors tugged the veins to stop the bleeding."
Modern physicians were amazed when they had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the ancient Egyptian "Smith papyrus" from 1700 BC. Already in those distant times, there were special medical instruments, including copper needles for suturing wounds. What is the mysterious mystery of the knowledge of the ancient Aesculapians? It is striking that this "medical treatise" is a copy of an earlier source dating back to 2700 BC.
It was the possession of the technique of surgery that allowed the ancient Egyptians to advance in the field of mummification. So, more recently it became known that before embalming the bodies of the dead, ancient surgeons trained on skeletons.
The most striking find was Idu's skeleton, found in 1914. The flesh has been skillfully separated from the bone. “They probably already knew that flesh decomposes, and therefore felt it was better to embalm the bones,” says biochemist Ulrich Weser of the University of Tübingen.
The bones were treated with a special antiseptic solution. And the embalming turned out to be so perfect that it remained intact and active enzyme (enzyme) - alkaline phosphatase. It was possible to isolate it from the collarbone.
One cannot but mention the amazing abilities of Indian healers. The training was carried out in special schools. It was in India, in ancient times, that the first operation was performed, which received the name "Caesarean section" much later.
Mysticism envelops ancient art. And the answer to the question of how the ancient people received divine knowledge - alas, nobody knows.
