Babylonian and Assyrian medical lore : with special references to dentistry / by B.R. Townend.

  • Townend, B. R.
Date:
[1941]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Babylonian and Assyrian medical lore : with special references to dentistry / by B.R. Townend. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/26 (page 14)
    “ . . . and his mouth is puckered, its name is Ziktu . . . and his mouth is broken, its name is Ziktu . . . hurts him, its name is Ziktu. If the affected part is dark and srnall, its name is ^ihtu. Thou shalt bray . . . pine turpentine, mix in kurunnu beer, bind on him and he shall recover. What is meant by Ziktu . In a footnote Dr. Thompson says that it is probably a point or stmg.^ The description of the puckered mouth puts harelip into one s mind but the treatment and promised cure does not support tms. A very serious condition such as noma seems unlikely also, as again the physician promises a cure. Alveolar abscess opening on the lace or actinomycosis seem to be most likely answers, but the puckered mouth remains a difficulty unless it can refer to the puckering of scar tissue round an external sinus. ^ A number of remedies are given for a condition the characteristics of which are : “ If a man’s saliva comes when he is talking and he elects spittle in a man’s face, his teeth ache, his hurting (.) him, the eructation of . . . that man’s trouble. . . . Here we ave one of those tantalising gaps which may never be filled. Excessive salivation seems to have been regarded as a serious symptom lor in another text we read : If the saliva in a man s mouth does not cease to flow, that man has been bewitched.’’ Finally one very interesting diagnosis which seems to point to some form of facial paralysis reads as follows : If a man s mouth hurts him, it being twisted to the right, so that he cannot speak, his speech he cannot control, for six days thou shaft make his diagnosis, on the seventh. . . .’’ The text here, unfortunately is fragmentary, but some form of poultice seems to be prescribed for treatment. The following text, which is even more fragmentary, commences in the same way, but refers to the mouth being twisted to the left instead of to the right. This brief survey of the intelligible part that has come down to us of Assyrian dental lore, coupled with the allusions to the same subject I have quoted from the royal correspondence, points to the fact that I have stressed throughout this paper that tbe Mesopotamian leeches had made several steps forward from the purely magical and animistic concept of disease towards a more rational and scientific outlook. Their promise was limited by magic, but the promise was undoubtedly there. r xi. a We must now consider the dental materia medica of the Assyrian and Babylonian people. For the bulk of our knowledge of ms difficult subject we are again indebted to Dr. Thompson. The results of his brilliant researches are to be found m his the Assyrian Herbal,’’ Luzac & Co., 1924, and m the footnotes to his various papers giving translations of the medical texts. In the introduction to his Herbal he tells us that the Assyrians used no less than 550 names for vegetable, mineral, other and umdentmed drugs, and in addition, such substances as beer, wine, fats, oil, honey, wax and milk. Not only do these drugs appear m the medical texts used in prescriptions for medicines for the cure of various ailments, but the Assyrians actually prepared, in a talmlar form, lists of drugs with their various uses. Some of the tablets on which these texts are inscribed have come down to us, including one containing a number of drugs used for dental troubles. By