Healthcare knowledge roughly 300 years before Alexander

Alexander’s medical knowledge is based on the teaching he received from Aristotle. Sophisticated medicine did, however, exist much earlier. Hippocrates of Cos, for instance, lived only one hundred years before their time. The Hippocratic Oath, which may have appeared only after the physician’s death, has survived until today (see: A healthy mind in a healthy body – in early antiquity). This oath was, in fact, a religious document established to ensure that a doctor operated within and for community values. The oath was sworn by Apollo, Hygeia, and Panacea, promising to respect their teacher, not to administer poison or abuse their patients; quite importantly, they swore to keep the confidentiality between doctor and patient. 

[Fragment of a clay tablet from the Library of Ashurbanipal. Kouyunjik (ancient Nineveh), Neo-Assyrian, British Museum]

Three hundred years before Alexander and Aristotle, King Ashurbanipal of the Neo-Assyrian Empire kept the Nineveh Medical Encyclopaedia in his Library. These clay tablets held thousands of remedies and descriptions of the symptoms, which Alexander may have shared with the doctors traveling with the army. His men's lives were precious, and attending to their health and well-being was a priority (see: Alexander caring for the wounded and the dead). 

Plants were most certainly used in early civilizations since their medical effects were recorded around 2000 BC in Mesopotamia. The help of the gods was invoked for more complicated diseases requiring the performance of certain rituals or magic. Throughout antiquity, medicine mainly implied using plants, which were either applied to the affected body part or taken internally as potions. The ancient Egyptians also had a thorough knowledge of medicine, as documented by Herodotus. He reports that each part of the body requires specific treatments. It seems that physicians were actually specialized to treat one particular ailment of any sick patient. 

Anyway, in Mesopotamia, as the collection of medical texts grew over the centuries, the extensive Library of King Ashurbanipal was created in the 7th century BC. Scribes had gathered enough information to compose a medical dictionary, which may well be the first standardized, systematic handbook on therapeutic medicine. 

This Encyclopaedia was divided into twelve sections. The subjects moved from the head, through the torso, to the legs and feet. Each tablet constituted the equivalent of a chapter in our modern books, but some subjects are spread over more than one tablet, and there are 50 tablets in total. These tablets counted at least 250 lines. A note was added at the end of each tablet that referred to its place in the series. 

Today’s merit of this Library is to better understand how people looked at diseases and the best way to treat them in ancient times. Basically, they knew two types of specialists, one corresponding to our modern doctors and the other that could best be described as an alternative healer. 

This precious information collection has only been revealed in recent years because the tablets had been smashed to pieces in 612 BC when Nineveh fell into the hands of the Persians, Medes, and Babylonians. They divided the region between them afterward. Piecing the broken tablets back together was and is a tedious task as only a handful of people can decipher the cuneiform writing and thus reconstruct the texts. 

Once again, it is amazing, to say the least, that such precious knowledge remained hidden from us for 2,600 years! Where would our medical science be if we had continued elaborating and improving on the knowledge from the reign of King Ashurbanipal? Not only was it known to Alexander through Aristotle (and possibly to other physicians) but also to other key figures like King Philip’s doctor who operated on his eye, and Alexander’s own physician Philip of Acarnania (see: Alexander’s near-fatal dip in the Cydnus River at Tarsus)? So much information from antiquity has been sadly lost to us.